HlBRARY OF CONGRESS.* 

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* UNITED STATES OP AMERICA; 



MONTAIGNE; 

THE ENDLESS STUDY, 




OTHER MISCELLANIES. 



' 






ALEXANDER VINET. 



CD! 



TRANSLATED, WITH AN INTRODUCTION AND NOTES, 



ROBERT TURNBULL. 



NEW YORK: 
PUBLISHED BY M. W. DODD, 

BRICK CHURCH CHAPEL, CITY HALL SQUARE, 
(opposite the city hall.) 

JL^t^ e*S8£ ^^^ *#"? 

%^<&**' sty. **e«yf:/wf*> 






Entered, according to Act of Congress, 


in 


the 


year 


2850, 




By M. W. DODD, 










In the Clerk's 


Office for the Southern District of New York. 



STEREOTYPED BY THOMAS B. SMITH, 
216 WILLIAM STREET, N. Y. 






CONTENTS 



PREFATORY NOTE 

INTRODUCTION, BY THE TRANSLATOR . 

MONTAIGNE ON MORALITY 

SKETCH OF MONTAIGNE, BY THE TRANSLATOR 

MAN CREATED FOR GOD 

THE IDEA OF THE INFINITE .... 

THE ENDLESS STUDY 

THE CENTRE OF MORAL GRAVITATION. 
NOTICE OF JOUFFROY, BY THE TRANSLATOR . 
THE RELIGIONS OF MAN AND THE RELIGIONS OF GOD 
THE MYSTERIES OF CHRISTIANITY .... 
THE GOSPEL COMPREHENDED BY THE HEART 

FOLLY OF THE TRUTH 

A CHARACTERISTIC OF THE GOSPEL 

NATURAL FAITH 

CHRISTIAN FAITH 

PRACTICAL ATHEISM 

GRACE AND LAW 

MAN DEPRIVED OF ALL GLORY BEFORE GOD . 
THE FOUNDATION OF CHRISTIAN MORALITY . 
NECESSITY OF BECOMING CHILDREN. 
THE CLAIMS OF HEAVEN AND EARTH ADJUSTED . 
THE PURSUIT OF HUMAN GLORY INCOMPATIBLE WITH 

POWER OF THE FEEBLE 

THE INTOLERANCE OF THE GOSPEL .... 
THE TOLERANCE OF THE GOSPEL 



5 

7 

41 

56 

76 

82 

89 

131 

144 

153 

168 

182 

195 

215 

233 

248 

260 

280 

295 

332 

347 

360 

378 

394 

407 

418 



PREFATORY NOTE 



Those acquainted with a volume of Vinet's Essays and Discourses 
published by the translator a few years ago, but now out of print, 
under the title of " Vital Christianity," will readily discover, in a 
modified form, some portions of that work in the present, particularly 
in the Introduction and in the latter part of the volume. Circum- 
stances, over which the editor had no control, left him only this 
method of preserving for the use of the public, any part of that work, 
which was received with unusual cordiality, and served to introduce 
Vinet to American readers. The present volume, we think, will be 
found to possess a still higher interest and value, as it contains some 
of the finest things that Vinet wrote, and on themes of the highest 
moment. An apology, perhaps, is due from the translator for pre- 
suming to mingle his thoughts and explanations with the productions 
of such an author, in the form of Introduction, notes, and so forth. 
But the candid reader will allow, that as every author writes under 
peculiar circumstances, and with a view to certain readers, his works 
may not be so well adapted to another sphere and another class of 
readers. This, we think, will be found peculiarly the case with the 
works of Vinet, who wrote chiefly for the benefit of Swiss, French, 
and German readers, and who mingles in all his productions allusions 
and references to matters, literary, religious, and philosophical, with 
which comparatively few American or English readers are sup- 
posed to be familiar. Our aim has been, so to translate and so to 
edit the following work, that it may be really useful to general read- 
ers, and thus subserve the great end for which its devout and elo- 
quent author lived and died. 



INTRODUCTION. 



Since the days of Ulric Zuingle and Theodore Beza, no theologian 
or preacher in Switzerland has attained a higher celebrity than 
Alexander Vinet ; not only on account of the superior excellence 
of his character, and his vast attainments as a scholar, but also on 
account of the philosophical depth of his writings and the striking 
beauty and force of his diction. " Perfectly at home in the regions 
of pure thought," he was intimately conversant with French, Ger- 
man, Italian, English, and Classic literature, and astonished his con- 
temporaries as much by the acuteness of his speculations, as by the 
finish and brilliancy of his style. His recent death caused a deep 
sensation among all classes of the community in his native land, as 
well as in France, England, and the United States. " He was 
loved," says one of his contemporaries, " respected, and admired by 
all. His adversaries, even, if he can be said to have had adversa- 
ries, gave him the most honorable tribute of esteem and grief on the 
occasion of his death. The Reformed Churches of Switzerland and 
France feel that they have lost one of their foremost supports. Men 
of learning, who also know the distinguished merit of Mr. Vinet, 
unite with pious persons to deplore his departure from this world." 

" This universal sorrow," he adds, " is owing to the fact that Mr. 
Vinet joined to a high and comprehensive intellect a most benevolent 
heart. He was not only a writer of the first order and a philosopher en- 
dowed with the finest powers ; he was also a mild and amiable man, 
seeking to promote good wherever it was in his power, taking plea- 
sure in pointing out the merits rather than the defects of others. * * 
Thus he became one of the most honored men of the age. This 
union of genius and goodness is unhappily too rare. It often hap- 
pens, even among Christians, that the gifts of the understanding are 



Vlll INTRODUCTION. 

accompanied with a bitter or arbitrary spirit, and then our admiration 
is mingled with a sort of fear and distrust. But when greatness of 
soul is combined with the simplicity of a child (as in his case), it 
constitutes one of the noblest works of God." 

Our attention was first called to the writings of Vinet by Dr. 
Merle d'Aubigne, the well-known author of the "History of the 
Reformation." Having, in the course of conversation, asked him 
concerning the published discourses of the most distinguished preach- 
ers in France and Switzerland, he particularly recommended those 
of Vinet, speaking of him as the Chalmers of Switzerland. He re- 
ferred, also, to the work which he had recently published on the " Pro- 
fession of Religious Convictions, and the Separation of the Church 
from the State," as having produced a very great sensation in that 
part of the world. He admitted that Vinet differed from Chalmers 
in some respects, but intimated that he possessed a more profoundly 
philosophical spirit. Every one familiar with the writings of both 
men, will readily allow that they resemble each other in breadth 
and energy of mind, originality of conception, and vigor of diction. 
Chalmers, we think, has more of energy and passion, but less of 
philosophical acumen and delicacy of perception ; more of oratorical 
force and affluence of imagery, but less of real beauty, perspicacity, 
and power of argument. His discourses resemble mountain torrents, 
dashing in strength and beauty amid rocks and woods, carrying 
everything before them, and gathering force as they leap and foam 
from point to point, in their progress to the sea. Vinet's, on the 
other hand, are like deep and beautiful rivers, passing with calm 
but irresistible majesty through rich and varied scenery ; now gliding 
around the base of some lofty mountain, then sweeping through 
meadows and cornfields, anon reflecting in their placid bosom some 
old castle, or vine-covered hill, taking villages and cities in their 
course, and bearing the commerce and population of the neighboring- 
countries on their deepening and expanding tide. The diction of 
Chalmers is strikingly energetic, but somewhat rugged and involved, 
occasionally, too, rather unfinished and clumsy. Vinet's is pure and 
classical, pellucid as one of his own mountain lakes, and yet re- 
markably energetic and free in its graceful flow. 

Another thing in which they differ has reference to the mode in 
which they develop a subject. Chalmers grasps one or two great 



INTRODUCTION. IX 

conceptions, and expands them into a thousand beautiful and striking 
forms. His great power lies in making luminous and impressive the 
single point upon which he would fix his reader's attention, running 
it, like a thread of gold, through the web of his varied and exhaust- 
less imagery. Vinet penetrates into the heart of his subject, ana- 
lyzes it with care, lays it open to inspection, advances from one 
point to another, adds thought to thought, ilustration to illustration, 
till it becomes clear and familiar to the mind of the reader. His in- 
tellect is distinguished as much by its logical acumen as by its pow- 
ers of illustration and ornament. He seldom repeats his thoughts in 
the same discourse, and rarely fails in clearness of conception and 
arrangement. Chalmers delights and persuades by the grandeur of 
his ideas and the fervor of his language, but he adds little to the 
stock of our information. He abounds in repetitions, and is not un- 
frequently confused in his arrangement, and somewhat negligent in 
his statements. Though eloquent and powerful, his discourses are 
not remarkably instructive. But this is not the case with those of 
Vinet. While they charm by their beauty, and convince by their 
persuasive power, they abound in original views, and lead the mind 
into fresh channels of reflection and feeling. While one is satisfied 
with reading the productions of the great Scottish divine once or 
twice, he recurs again and again to those of his Swiss compeer. 
They abound in " the seeds of things," and possess a remarkable 
power to quicken and expand the mind. On this account they ought 
to be read, or rather studied, slowly and deliberately. Like the 
works of John Howe, which Robert Hall was accustomed to read so 
frequently, they will repay many perusals. 

Both of these distinguished men were truly evangelical in their 
theological views ; they developed with equal power the peculiar 
doctrines of the Gospel, and in their respective spheres did much to 
promote evangelical religion among the higher and more cultivated 
circles of society. Both laid their great literary attainments under 
contribution to defend and illustrate the religion of the Cross, and 
devoted much time and attention to those great moral and politico- 
ecclesiastical questions which agitate the whole Christian world. 
On most of these questions the views of Vinet were more thorough 
and consistent, and aimed at a complete separation of the Church 
from the State ; a result, however, to which Chalmers came in prac- 

1* 



X INTRODUCTION. 

tice, and which, had he lived, he would unquestionably have reached 
even in theory. Both possessed great simplicity and earnestness 
of character. Alike free from cant and pretension, and appa- 
rently unconscious of their greatness, they were distinguished by 
a rare depth and beauty of character. They were men of genius 
and men of God. As a writer, Vinet led the movement in France 
and Switzerland against formalism and scepticism in the Church, 
and particularly against the union of Church and State. Chalmers 
did the same, at least by means of action, in Scotland and England. 
Both were professors in the colleges of their native lands ; both se- 
ceded from the national church, but continued, by the common con- 
sent of the community, to occupy important places as teachers of 
theology. They wrote largely and successfully on the subject of 
moral science, in its connections with Christianity, and were called, 
especially by their published discourses, to address men of high sta- 
tion and cultivated minds. 

As a preacher, Vinet was more calm in manner, more compre- 
hensive in thought, more subtle in analysis, more felicitous in diction 
than his Scottish compeer ; but he never reached his impassioned 
fervor and practical power. He was better acquainted with the 
French and German philosophy, which he had studied carefully in 
the original sources. He had read more extensively and thought 
more deeply upon all the fundamental problems which agitate the 
thinkers of continental Europe, and he possessed naturally a keener 
and more discriminating intellect ; but he could lay no claim to the 
fervid enthusiasm, the practical wisdom, the business tact, the all- 
embracing energy of that prince of preachers. Vinet regards every 
subject in its fundamental relations. He thinks patiently and pro- 
foundly. With a vigorous and delicate imagination and great power 
of expression, he is serene, self-possessed, and philosophical. His 
words are carefully weighed ; and to those who can fully enter into 
his spirit they possess a clearness and precision, combined with a 
grandeur and beauty, at once surprising and delightful. But their 
very precision, more philosophical than popular, in connection with 
their unusual depth and fulness of import, somewhat bewilder com- 
mon minds, those, especially, not versed in philosophical inquiries, 
and thus invest them with an air of difficulty and obscurity. These 
peculiarities are seen to some extent in a few of his discourses, but 



INTRODUCTION. XI 

it is in his dissertation on religious convictions, and especially in his 
critical and philosophical essays, that they appear in their perfection. 
One must be conversant with these to form a just idea of the depth 
and grandeur of his conceptions, the force and delicacy of his lan- 
guage. Chalmers, on the other hand, with all his majesty and force 
is plain and practical, and even somewhat loose and declamatory. 
He is seldom if ever obscure, except from defective reasoning or in- 
adequate expression. The stream of his eloquence rushes bright 
and strong under the eye of all. Its course is easily marked as it 
sparkles and foams under the light of heaven. The eloquence of 
Vinet is not only different in kind and aspect, but seems to take a 
different course. Deep and strong, it only seems obscure — reflect- 
ing a strange spiritual radiance, borrowed from afar, it glides in 
many winding turns, as if among Alpine solitudes ; now mirroring 
the glacier peaks in its calm depths, now passing under the shadow 
of some frowning precipice, and anon gathering itself into one of 
those dark-blue lakes which lie encircled amid the everlasting hills. 
Chalmers goes forth in the daylight of this every-day world, " re- 
joicing as a strong man to run a race." Vinet is seen gazing upon 
the stars in the depths of the far heavens. The one adores Jehovah 
amid the kindling glories of the sunrise, the other in the hallowed 
shadows of the night. The latter is a philosopher, profound and rev- 
erent, the other an orator, energetic and free. Chalmers sways the 
minds of the people, and works a mighty reformation in the Church 
of God, Vinet illumines the souls of thinkers, aud mingles, like the 
star of morning, with the light of heaven. Both died about the same 
time, when they seemed to be needed the most by their respective 
countries, and the Church of Christ ; and now they worship to- 
gether in the temple not made with hands, while " the long radiance" 
of their genius and piety lingers behind them, to stimulate and cheer 
their fellow-pilgrims on earth. 

It is but justice to say that Chalmers as a preacher was more 
popular than Vinet, and that his writings thus far have secured a 
wider circulation. Vinet, however, must become popular, if not with 
the mass, yet with the thoughtful and cultivated wherever he is 
known. His reputation in Switzerland and France is veiy high, 
even among mere literary men ; he is also well known and highly 
esteemed in Germany, where his writings have been translated and 



Xll INTRODUCTION. 

read with much interest. His great work on the " Manifestation" or 
" Profession of Religious Convictions," has been translated into Ger- 
man and English, in the one case by Dr. Volkmann, in the other by 
Charles Theodore Jones, and has attracted much attention, particu- 
larly in Germany, where the way was prepared for its reception by 
the two works of Dr. Rettig,* and Pastor Wolff,f on the same sub- 
ject. It has exerted a great and obvious influence on the mind of 
Count Gasparin, whose writings on the subject of religious liberty 
are destined, we think, to produce the most salutary results. Indeed, 
this work of Vinet is greatly admired on the continent of Europe, 
except perhaps by some of the friends of the alliance of Church and 
State. The great number of reviews and replies it has called out, 
is a striking proof of its value. We are apprehensive, however, that 
the English version gives but an inadequate conception of its force 
and eloquence. Faithful and laborious it undoubtedly is, but it does 
not reach the strength and beauty of the original. 

" There are in Vinet's mind and writings," says an accomplished 
American scholar, " many things to remind a reader of John Foster. 
There is the same searching analysis and profound thought, united 
to a flowing eloquence to which, generally, Foster can lay no claim."! 
The remark is just, though Foster is greatly inferior to Vinet in ac- 
quired knowledge, and especially in an intimate familiarity with 
general literature and speculative philosophy. Generally speaking, 
also, Vinet is more genial and hopeful, and takes a wider and more 
discursive range of thought. It is questionable, however, whether he 
quite equals the English essayist in the complete originality of his 
conceptions, and the racy vigor of his language. Vinet has borrowed 
more from Fenelon, Pascal, and the Port Royalists, than Foster has 
from any writer whatever. Still, in philosophical depth, as well as 
in delicacy, precision, and beauty of style, the palm must be given 
to Vinet. The thoughts of Foster, to borrow a figure of Robert 
Hall's, are presented to us in the shape of rich and beautiful 
masses of bullion ; Vinet's are wrought into finished and elegant 
forms. 

It is evident, however, from a perusal of Vinet's writings, as 

* Die Freie Prolestantischen Kirche ; Giessen, 1832. 

t Zukunft der Protestantischen Kirche in Deutschland ; 1838. 

J Dr. William R. Williams. 



INTRODUCTION. Xlll 

Sainte Beuve, a distinguished contemporary critic suggests, that he 
sympathized more fully with Pascal than with any other writer. In- 
ferior in originality and force to that prodigy of genius, who may be 
said to have invented geometry for himself, and at the same time cre- 
ated a rich and vigorous style of writing, which has left its marked im- 
press upon the literature of France, Vinet has the same power of ab- 
stract thinking, the same distrust of philosophic theories, the same 
sense of" the vanity and grandeur of man," and the same majestic 
and beautiful style. Free from the superstitions and doubts of Pascal, 
he worships with him in the same solemn temple, trusts in the same 
Redeemer, and longs for the same perfection. Their " thoughts" on 
religion wonderfully harmonize ; and it is really beautiful to see how, 
in this high union, Catholic and Protestant are blended. Indeed, Vi- 
net is Pascal in a softened light, with a stronger faith, and a deeper 
peace. 

The following are the principal events in the life of our author, so 
far as we have been able to ascertain them. 

Alexander Vinet was born 17th June, 1797, in Lausanne, capital 
of the Canton Vaud, Switzerland, certainly one of the most beautiful 
cities in the world, lying as it does upon the high and sloping bank 
of Lake Leman, or the Lake of Geneva, adorned with squares and 
gardens, fine edifices and delightful promenades ; in sight, also, of 
the high Alps with their snow-clad peaks, and in the neighborhood 
of Vevay, Chillon, Villeneuve, and other places of classic and roman- 
tic interest ; at one time the residence of Zuingle and Beza, and the 
chosen dwelling-place of Gibbon, the historian of Rome. An Acad- 
emy of considerable celebrity has existed here since 1536,* which, in 
1806, was elevated into an Academic Institute (what in this country 
would perhaps be called a University), with fourteen professors and 
a rector. It was also re-organized in 1838, and separated, if we 
mistake not, from all immediate connection with the national church. 
From its origin Lausanne has been distinguished for its high literary 
culture, its refined and agreeable society. It is the residence of 
many foreigners. 

Destined to the ministry by his father, who regarded the clerical 
profession as the most desirable and honorable of all, Vinet was 

* Founded by the celebrated reformer, Viret, one of the ablest and most eloquent 
preachers of the Swiss Reformation. 



XIV INTRODUCTION. 

placed at the Academy of his native city, and pursued the ordinary 
course of studies, occupied, however, more with literature than the- 
ology. Fortunately his mind was attracted, at an early period, to the 
study of moral science, for which he possessed a decided genius, and 
which exerted a very favorable influence, not only upon his theolo- 
gical inquiries, but upon his religious character. 

At the age of twenty, two years before the legal termination of 
his studies, he accepted a place as professor of the French language 
and literature, in the Establishment of Public Instruction or Univer- 
sity, at Bale (German, Basle), capital of the canton of that name, a 
fine old city on the banks of the Rhine, distinguished for its Cathe- 
dral and University, once the residence of Oecolampadius, the friend 
of Zuinglius, and one of the most eloquent preachers of the Refor- 
mation, and also the burial-place of the celebrated Erasmus. Such 
an appointment is an incontestable evidence of the superiority of 
Vinet's talents, and the high reputation for scholarship he had ac- 
quired even at that early period of his life. He made a visit to Lau- 
sanne in 1819, in order to submit to the requisite examinations and 
receive ordination as a minister of the gospel. He returned to Bale, 
and continued there till 1837, as professor of the French language 
and literature. It was during his residence in this place that he 
published the most of his earlier writings, and established his repu- 
tation as a preacher. In 1830 he published two discourses, the one 
on the Intolerance of the Gospel, the other on the Tolerance of tlie 
Gospel, which attracted great attention. They were prefaced in the 
following style, furnishing a beautiful specimen of the simplicity and 
modesty of his character. " Persons advanced in Christian knowl- 
edge will find, we fear, little nutriment in these discourses. Nor is 
it to them we have felt ourselves called to speak ; it would better 
become us to hear them. We have forbidden our words to transcend 
the limits of our personal emotions ; an artificial heat would not be 
salutary. Nevertheless we hope that to many persons we have spo- 
ken a word in season ; and we cast it into the world, commending 
it to the Divine blessing, which can make some fruits of holiness 
and peace to spring from it for the edification of the Christian 
church." 

In this brief preface a peculiarity of all our author's productions, 
and especially of his discourses, reveals itself. They are " born, not 



INTRODUCTION. XV 

made," originated, not manufactured. His soul was never cast into 
any artificial mould. It has great clearness, elasticity, and strength. 
He is therefore entirely free from hackneyed phrases, and stereo- 
typed modes of thought. His discourses are drawn fresh from his 
own profound spirit. While perusing them, you feel as if you were 
listening, not to the mere preacher, but to the deep thinker and the 
man of God. He never transcends the limits of his own personal 
experience ; but that being the experience at once of a great and a 
good man, it possesses a peculiar warmth and beauty. " One must 
breathe the spirit," says Pindar, " before he can speak." — " Out of the 
abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh," is the testimony of 
Jesus Christ. Our author, we think, understands this, and hence 
approaches as near as possible to the model which John Foster has 
in his mind when he insists so strongly on the necessity, in evan- 
gelical writings, of naturalness and entire freedom from cant. In- 
deed Vinet distinctly acknowledges the great importance of this qual- 
ity, and urges the same views as those of Foster's Essay on the 
Aversion of Men of Taste to Evangelical Religion. In the Intro- 
duction to a Volume of his Discourses, he says : — " Feeble, I address 
myself to the feeble. I give to them the milk which has nourished 
myself. When some of us become stronger than the rest, we will 
together demand the bread of the strong. But I have thought that 
those who are at the commencement of their course need some one 
who, placing himself in their point of view, should speak to them 
less as a preacher than as a man who precedes them by scarcely a 
single step, and who is anxious to turn to their account the little ad- 
vance he has made upon them. 

" It is perhaps desirable that every one, according to the measure 
of knowledge which has been given him, should labor for the evan- 
gelization of the world. In the mumber of those whom I may be 
permitted to call candidates of the truth, there are perhaps some 
souls that are particularly attracted by the kind of preaching I have 
employed, and employed without choice ; for I could not choose it. 
I say perhaps, and nothing more ; but what I affirm with more con- 
fidence is, that it is important that each one should show himself 
such as he is, and not affect gifts he has not received. 

" I believe I am not mistaken in saying that among those who 
speak or write on divine things there is an exaggerated craving for 



XVI INTRODUCTION. 

uniformity. I know indeed, that community of convictions and hopes, 
the habit of deriving instruction from the same sources, the intimate 
nature of the relations that subsist in Christian society, must have 
produced, as their result, a unity of thoughts, of intellectual habits, 
and even, to a certain extent, of expression ; but while we ought to 
admire this unity when it is produced, we ought to make no effort to 
produce it. The generous freedom of Christianity is repugnant to 
that timid deference to a conventional language and a vain ortho- 
doxy of tone and style ; nor does sincerity permit us to adopt, as an 
expression of our individuality, a common type, the imprint of which 
is always, in some degree, foreign to us ; the interest of our religious 
development demands that we should not conceal from ourselves our 
real condition ; and nothing could be more fitted to conceal it from 
ourselves than the involuntary habit of disguising it to others. In 
fine, the beauty of the evangelical work, and even unity itself, de- 
mand that each nature should manifest itself with its own charac- 
teristics. Confidence is felt in unity, when it produces itself under 
an aspect of variety ; community of principle is rendered more stri- 
king by diversity of forms ; while uniformity being necessarily arti- 
ficial, is always more or less suspected, and involuntarily suggests 
the idea of constraint or dissimulation." 

It was probably in Bale that Vinet formed those decidedly spiritual 
views of religion, so clearly developed in all his discourses and other 
writings. In this place, an evangelical influence in greater or less de- 
gree, has existed ever since the time of the Reformation. The labors 
of Oecolampadius, whom the good people of the city were accus- 
tomed to call their bishop, the occasional presence and preaching of 
the great Swiss reformer, Zuinglius, the decided piety and activity 
of several of their most distinguished pastors and preachers in sub- 
sequent times, and more recently the prevalence of a noble mission- 
ary spirit, have conspired to impress an evangelical character upon 
the place. It has of course suffered, like all other cities in Switzer- 
land and Germany, from the prevalence of rationalism, formalism, 
and infidelity ; still the fire of divine love has continued to burn upon 
its altars with a pure, and we hope, brightening flame. 

It was in Bale also that Vinet composed his " Memoir in favor of 
Liberty of Worship," which obtained the prize offered by the Society 
of Christian Morals in Paris. This production, which displays the 



INTRODUCTION. XV11 

vigor and enthusiasm of his mind, as well as his intense aversion to 
all intolerance and injustice, had a great circulation in France, among 
intelligent men. M. Guizot, chairman of the Committee of Award, 
rendered a public tribute to the piety and talent of the author. 

In 1832, he gave to the public the first volume of his Discourses 
on Religious Subjects. His " Nouveaux Discours" appeared at a 
subsequent period. As they were written under particular circum- 
stances and addressed to a particular class of men, they possess a 
character of their own, differing from anything in the whole range 
of pulpit literature. " I would not," says Felice, " offer these Dis- 
courses as models to be followed by all preachers ; Mr. Vinet him- 
self does not. I say only that they deserve to be carefully studied 
by all enlightened men. 

" In general, great pulpit orators try to be popular ; and this is 
right. Christianity is not a science addressing itself only to some 
choice minds ; it is a religion revealed for all, necessary for all, and 
which seems to have been designed for the small even more than the 
great. ' To the poor the Gospel is preached,'' said Jesus Christ. A 
preacher then conforms to the spirit of the Gospel, when he adapts 
himself to the capacity of the hearers ; and the more accessible he 
is to the comprehension of the humble, the better he attains his end. 
But there is no rule without exceptions, and in some circumstances, 
the Christian orator is called to fathom the obscurest depths of phi- 
losophy. It depends especially upon the character of the hearers. 
It depends, also, upon the obstacles which the preacher must com- 
bat, and the effects he aims to produce. 

" On these principles we must judge the Religious Discourses of 
Mr. Vinet. They are, properly speaking, doctrinal, moral, and phi- 
losophical dissertations. He delivered them at Bale, before a select 
audience composed specially of professors and students. He had 
before him men accustomed to profound thought, and who felt doubts 
upon some points of the Christian revelation. His duty was to sat- 
isfy these internal wants. He could, without fear of not being un- 
derstood, lift himself to the sublime regions of speculative thought, 
and encounter objections which are happily unknown to the mass of 
Christians. 

" Considered in this point of view, nothing would seem more ad- 
mirable than the Discourses of Mr. Vinet. What copiousness and 



XV111 INTRODUCTION. 

what originality of thought ! what novelty in the illustrations of 
doctrine and morals ! what logic, at once sound and vigorous ! what 
warmth and pungency in the style ! To read merely the title of 
these meditations you would believe, often, that the speaker only dis- 
cussed some common-place ; but if you go farther, you see with 
surprise that upon the tritest subjects he has found things which no 
other had discovered before him. He is truly an orator sui generis ; 
he imitates no one, and I doubt if any one should imitate him. 

" This volume of Discourses had in France many readers. It did 
good particularly to those reflecting men who, without having distinct 
religious opinions, profess to believe something, and are known for 
their irreproachable conduct in the eyes of the world. Mr. Vinet, 
with his philosophical views and his amiable qualities, exactly met 
their wishes ; and more than one literary man, once a sceptic, was 
led by him to the cross of God the Saviour." 

In these Discourses, as in all Vinet's writings, we discover a re- 
markable combination of dissimilar qualities. But this is accounted 
for by a reference to the peculiar genius and circumstances of the 
author. A native of Switzerland, which is more allied, in its spirit 
and character, to Germany than to France, and intimately familiar 
with classic as well as English and German literature, Vinet unites 
the greatest subtlety and depth with all the grace and vivacity which 
distinguish the genius of France. It is surprising what elasticity 
and strength, what grace and grandeur, the French language as- 
sumes under his plastic hand.* So much is this the case, that it 
has been affirmed that no one has used the French tongue with more 
force and elegance since the days of Pascal. Contemplative, en- 
thusiastic, and poetical, his language glows with as much grandeur 
and picturesque beauty as the scenery of his native land. 

The citizens of the Canton Vaud several times requested Vinet to 
return to his native city. They offered him any place that he might 
wish. They told him that Bale was not his home, and that he ought 
to devote his talents to his own country, and other such things. For 
a long time he resisted their solicitations. He was attached to Bile 
by ties of gratitude and habit, and had many friends there ; he loved 
" the calm, modest, patriarchal life" he had spent there for many 

* The French language is spoken in the Cantons of Basle, Neufchatel, Geneva, 
and Vaud. Most of the people understand German, but they generally use French. 



INTRODUCTION. 



XIX 



years. But the solicitations of the Vaudese finally prevailed, and in 
1837 he became professor of practical theology in Lausanne. Stu- 
dents flocked from France and Switzerland to hear his instructive 
and eloquent lectures, and were inspired with the highest love and 
enthusiasm for their teacher. By his side were other teachers of 
merit, " but the impulse, the incitement to study, came from Vinet." 
He occupied this station for several years, but he found it neces- 
sary at last to declare his convictions on the impropriety of the union 
of the Church with the State. His book upon this subject produced 
quite an excitement, and engaged strongly the attention of thinking 
men both in Switzerland and France. In consequence of his views 
upon this subject he felt great scruples of conscience about keeping 
his place. His friends, however, urged him for their sakes to retain 
it. At this juncture a revolution broke out in the Canton. Evan- 
gelical ministers were persecuted, and compelled to leave their place 
in the established church. Vinet resigned his office as professor of 
theology, and was appointed professor of French literature. He was 
afterwards deposed by an infidel, truth-hating government, who in 
the abused name of liberty were guilty of shameful excesses. In 
company, therefore, with a noble band of self-denying ministers and 
members of the established church, who could not bear the imposi- 
tions of a despotic mob, who had assumed the reins of government, 
he went forth to found a free church amid the hills and vales of the 
Canton Vaud. Vinet was the heart and soul of this movement, 
and had the satisfaction before his death of seeing a church formed 
in which its ministers and members would be free to worship God 
according to the dictates of their consciences, yielding allegiance to 
none but Jesus Christ. Many tears were shed by the old pastors 
on leaving their homes and portions of their flocks, and although 
some faltered and failed, a noble host went out with their weeping 
families and friends, not knowing whither they went. The conduct 
of the government, which happens to be radical and infidel, consist- 
ing chiefly of associationists, rationalists, and demagogues, has been 
most atrocious. In the name of liberty, they have not hesitated to 
persecute these noble spirits ; they went so far even as to threaten 
Vinet with stoning and imprisonment ! But " wisdom is justified of 
all her children," and the persecuted ministers and members of the 
Free Church, with a calm decision and heroic self-sacrifice worthy 



XX INTRODUCTION. 

of the martyrs, preferred to obey God rather than man, and bade de- 
fiance to the miserable government of the mob, who alone claimed 
to be free. Their record is on high, and their memory will be fra- 
grant when the names of their persecutors are rotten in the dust. 
All Switzerland and the continent of Europe will yet own their 
power ; generations yet unborn will rise up and call them blessed. 
Man must be free. The Church of God shall be free. The decree 
has gone forth from the court of heaven, and no power on earth can 
prevent its fulfilment. " The dominion and the greatness of the do- 
minion under the whole heaven, shall be given to the saints of the 
Most High God." 

As a preacher, Vinet was rather solemn and impressive than stri- 
king and vehement. His personal appearance was not peculiarly 
imposing, though dignified and agreeable. It possessed, however, a 
charm to those who knew him intimately, and well corresponded to 
his calm and lofty genius. He was rather tall, somewhat bony and 
muscular, but not stout, with a slight stoop in his gait, as if he were 
meditating some serious or agreeable subject. His complexion was 
tawny as an Indian's, his mouth firm and benevolent in its expres- 
sion, eyes dark and lustrous, forehead rather broad than high, though 
by no means deficient in height, and surmounted by dark, clustering 
hair. The whole aspect of the countenance was honest, benevolent, 
and intellectual. His voice was low, his manner calm and delib- 
erate. The flush upon his face and the gleaming of his eye, alone 
revealed the majestic energy of the indwelling spirit, uttering its 
profound and oracular thoughts.* 

* " The printed sermons of Mr. Vinet do not give a complete idea of his ordinary- 
manner of preaching. He had a more popular method for small assemblies, for 
familiar meetings. There, he was no longer the lofty and abstruse philosopher ; he 
was the humble Christian, simple in his expositions, always intelligible in his terms, 
and who, like a brother or a friend, takes his hearers by the hand to lead them to 
Christ. Mr. Vinet, in these ordinary circumstances, did not write his sermons; he 
was accustomed to preach with notes written on a small piece of paper. His voice 
had something mild and penetrating. He made few gestures, kept a calm attitude, 
and did not aim at bursts of eloquence. He was sometimes animated, but with 
moderation. He did not run after the pathetic. He believed, with reason, that 
vehemence carried to excess diminishes the authority of the sacred orator. Moder- 
ation also indicates strength ; and the preacher who preserves always the control 
over himself will produce, in the end, deeper impressions than the impetuous de- 
claimer. It is perhaps well that there are some revival preachers who excite violent 
emotions. But they are not the best models of Christian eloquence, though they 



INTRODUCTION. XXI 

In his intercourse with his family and friends, he was kind and 
gentle ; and in all his deportment showed himself at once a great 
and a good man. He was distinguished as much for simplicity as 
dignity of character, for profound humility as for exalted worth. 
Apparently as unconscious of his greatness as a star is of its light, 
he shed upon all around him a benignant radiance. In a word, he 
walked with God. This controlled his character, this shaped his 
manners. Steeped in holy love, he could not be otherwise than se- 
rene and gentle. 

While resident at Bale and Lausanne, Vinet made frequent con- 
tributions of a critical and philosophical kind, to the Semeur, and 
other periodicals. Several of his works were crowned (couronne) 
as the expression is, by the French Society of Christian Morals. 
He also published a volume of philosophical criticisms, in part derived 
from those he had contributed to the Semeur, in which he discusses 
with uncommon depth and subtlety, but in language of exquisite 
clearness and force, some of the highest problems in philosophy and 
morals, and dissects the maxims and theories of such men as Mon- 
taigne, Voltaire, Rochefoucauld, Jouffroy, Cousin, Quinet, and Lam- 
artine.* His fine genius for philosophical speculation, in connection 
with his strong common sense, and his unwavering faith in the Gospel, 
are here strikingly developed. Perfectly at home in the region of pure 

obtain, perhaps, more applause than others. Mr. Vinet never was ambitious of this 
ephemeral popularity." 

* " M. Vinet," says the Semeur, "'has exercised for sixteen years his criticism, at 
once learned and brilliant, on all the productions of our great writers. His articles 
united would make an admirable course of contemporary literature in a Christian 
point of view. To be more sure of not mistaking the nature of the moral errors 
and false hopes to which he wished to oppose the divine remedy, M. Vinet studied 
them in the works of the most illustrious representatives of modern thought. Just 
before his death, he had proposed to continue his critical series by a review of La- 
martine's History of the Girondins." In 1846, he published a pamphlet of seventy- 
one pages, entitled ' Du Socialisme considere dans son Principe.' " It is a funda- 
mental and very able discussion of a question which is now deeply agitating society 
in Switzerland and in other parts of Europe. Its most melancholy developments 
have perhaps been witnessed in the Canton of Vaud. Its abettors, ignorant of 
Christianity or utterly hostile to it, unacquainted with the solemn lessons of history, 
or despising them, appeal to man's social nature, to a species of levelling fraterniza- 
tion, ' to the identification of man and society,' as a sovereign remedy for the ills 
which afflict the race." — Dr. Edwards. 

Since his death, his " Evangelical Studies" and his " Studies on Pascal" have 
been published. 



XX11 INTRODUCTION. 

abstractions, he yet possesses the power of clear and eloquent ex- 
pression, " giving to airy nothings a local habitation and a name." 
With eagle glance, he detects the subtlest fallacies of his opponents, 
and lays down, in brief and expressive phrase, those great and fun- 
damental principles of belief, without which all our speculations are 
only visions of cloudland. Vinet was neither a spiritualist nor a 
sensationalist. He belonged neither to the school of Locke nor of 
Kant, of Hegel nor of Cousin. He did not reject altogether the 
German " spiritual philosophy," but he was very far from accepting 
it. It was too vague, too dogmatic, too extravagant for his clear, 
well-balanced intellect. Moreover, he distinguished clearly between 
philosophy and religion — between the speculations of the one and the 
revelations of the other. While conceding all that was due to sci- 
ence, he bowed with reverence before the word of God. He brought 
all the spoils of reason to the Cross, and kneeling there as an humble 
suppliant, looked up into the face of the dying Saviour, and ex- 
claimed, "Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom." 
His heart understood that work of love, and his intellect grew still 
and reverent under its influence. In all his works, this element of 
his character appears predominant. It is the one thing which gave 
unity to his life and labors. In a word, he was a sincere and humble 
Christian. His mighty soul was laid, all throbbing with thought and 
feeling, on the warm bosom of the Son of God. Renouncing " his 
own righteousness.' 1 relying upon Christ alone, and consecrating his 
attainments on the altar of Christian love, he rejoiced in the abound- 
ing grace of God, and lay down to die in the calm and blessed hope 
of a glorious immortality. His decease took place somewhat sud- 
denly, on the 4th of May, 1847, before he was quite fifty years of 
age, at Clarens, near Lausanne, just on the margin of Lake Leman, 
whither he had been sent by his physicians. It was the death of 
a Christian, calm and beautiful as the last rays of sunset upon the 
mountains of his native land. 

Yinet's last lecture was on these words of our Saviour : " I have 
glorified thee on the earth ; I have finished the work thou gavest 
me to do. And now, Father, glorify thou me with thine own 
self." The seriousness, the elevation, the humility with which he 
expounded these words, the fervor with which at the close he prayed 
to God that they might be fulfilled in himself and in his hearers, 



INTRODUCTION. XX111 

seemed almost like a presentiment that he was near the end of his 
course, and that God was about to remove him from the evil to 
come. His funeral took place on Thursday, May sixth ; his pupils 
claiming the honor of being the bearers, sang at his tomb " a hymn 
of sorrow and of hope." The Rev. William Monod then made a 
short address ; a pupil ' uttered a last adieu to the mortal dust, and 
said to the glorified spirit, Thanks, we shall meet again !' 

Most of the Essays and Miscellanies we have translated, are ad- 
dressed particularly to that large class of cultivated minds who have 
some prepossessions in favor of Christianity, but who, from the in- 
fluence of latent scepticism, do not yield their hearts to its direct and 
all-controlling influence. This circumstance, as already suggested, 
stamps upon them a peculiar character. It has rendered them at 
once profound and practical. But it has given rise to some incon- 
venience in the use of words, as the author himself acknowledges. 
For example, the words reason, nature, life, are occasionally used in 
their strict and philosophical sense, then again in their more loose 
and general import. At one time, reason is recommended and ex- 
alted as the gift of God, and the criterion of truth ; at another, it is 
contemned and rejected as an impostor and a cheat. In the one 
case, he evidently refers to reason legitimate and true, occupying its 
own sphere, and performing its proper work ; in the other, to reason 
perverted and false, transcending the limits which God has assigned 
it, assuming extravagant pretensions, and trampling upon the plain- 
est principles of science and revelation. Indeed, as the author sug- 
gests, the word in these instances is used in two different senses. 
" So far as the words nature and reason designate that foundation of 
moral and intellectual truth which we carry within us, those univer- 
sal and immutable principles to which all systems appeal, which are 
admitted in the most opposite theories, and on the common ground 
of which opponents the most decided are compelled to re-unite, at 
least for a moment, nature and reason merit the homage I have ren- 
dered them ; for if, in my discussions, I had not set out from this 
given point, whence could I set out ? But so far as reason and na- 
ture, instead of receiving the light of God, instead of appealing to it, 
and using its rays to illuminate their pathway, pretend to create that 
light, or to speak more exactly, so far as it is pretended, in the name 



XXIV INTRODUCTION. 

of nature and reason, which disavow such an undertaking, to com- 
municate to man an illumination, and a power, which must come 
from on high, I set myself against that abuse. And if, in con- 
forming to a usage more oratorical than philosophical, I designate 
that abuse by the name of those powers which give occasion to it, 
if I call nature and reason those pretensions which are raised in the 
name of nature and reason, I confide in the attention and good faith 
of my readers, without concealing what the severity of philosophical 
language might demand from me." With this explanation, every in- 
telligent reader will make the distinctions, clearly indicated by the 
spirit and scope of the author's reasoning. 

" Philosophers and men of the world," says Vinet, in the introduc- 
tion to the first volume of his Discourses, " invite us, in some sense, 
to meet them ; having lingered long in the precincts of philosophy, 
they approach towards the sanctuary. The secret of life, its final 
word, is demanded from all quarters ; and should we, who know that 
final word, be avaricious of it ; should we refuse to speak it, because 
we must speak it to philosophers in a language less familiar to us 
than to them ? That word is of all languages ; it is susceptible of 
all forms ; it has a thousand different expressions ; for it is found at 
the termination of all questions, at the close of all discussions, at 
the summit of all ideas. Long or short, direct or indirect, every road 
is true that conducts to the foot of the cross." 

The author, however, modestly disclaims all pretension of " preach- 
ing Christ in the Areopagus, or entering the lists with the doctors," 
but adds, that he had involuntarily turned towards " that numerous 
class of cultivated men who, educated in the bosom of Christendom, 
and imbued, if the expression may be allowed, with Christian pre- 
possessions, feebly struggle either against their own heart, frightened 
by the solemn aspect of Christianity, or against that too general im- 
pression that Christianity, so necessary, so beautiful, so consoling, 
cannot be justified in the eyes of reason." 

As to the first difficulty, he proceeds to say, " The Christian 
preacher will not consider it his duty to remove it, by abstracting 
anything from the serious character of the Gospel. On the contrary, 
he is gratified to find this prepossession established ; it is one error 
less to eradicate. The fear which the gospel has produced is the 
commencement of adhesion. It is this very seriousness which the 



INTRODUCTION. XXV 

minister of the Gospel ought to cultivate to maturity. As to the 
second difficulty, which turns," says he, " on the old opposition be- 
tween faith and reason, he makes the following admirable remarks. 

" He who speaks of revealed religion, speaks of a system which 
reason cannot discover, because it is necessary that God himself 
should communicate it to us by supernatural means. The Christian, 
then, rejects reason, so far as it professes to produce or create the 
truth. He does, in his sphere, what the true philosopher does in 
his ; for the latter admits, by virtue of an internal revelation, facts 
for the discovery of which reason is of no use. The philosopher 
has not to demonstrate, a priori, the facts of internal revelation, a 
revelation without antecedents, and anterior to all acquisitions. 
The theologian, on his part, recognizes, in revealed facts, an acqui- 
sition superior to all acquisitions ; he no longer proves* these facts, 
for to prove them would be to create them. By acting thus he does 
not deny reason ; on the contrary, he makes use of it. And this is 
the place to observe, that reason, that is to say, the nature of things, 
in whatever point of view we place ourselves, will always be to us 
the criterion of truth and the basis of faith. The truth without us 
must always be measured and compared with the truth within us ; 
with that intellectual conscience, which, as well as the moral con- 
science, is invested with sovereignty, gives judgments, knows remorse ; 
with those irresistible axioms which we carry within us, which form 
a part of our nature, and are the support and groundwork of all our 
thoughts ; in a word with reason. In this sense, every doctrine of 
revelation is held to be reasonable ; which, however, is not to say 
that every doctrine is held to be accessible to reason ; nothing hin- 
ders it from receiving that which surpasses it. Moreover, beyond 
this inviolable limit, the theologian finds space and employment for 
his reason ; he even applies it, in two different ways, to the facts of 
the supernatural revelation he announces. First of all, he develops 
the proofs of the authenticity of such a revelation ; then he applies 
himself to prove its necessity as well as its harmony with the immu- 
table nature of the human heart — in a word, the perfect reasonable- 
ness of a system which reason has not discovered. Nay, the farther 
this system is removed in its principles from the discoveries of human 
reason, the more does its coincidence with it become striking and 
admirable. Thus, in Christian preaching, reason abdicates on one 
2 



XXVI INTRODUCTION. 

point, but only on one ; it is satisfied not to comprehend, not to be 
able to construct, a 'priori, the principal facts of Christianity, and 
transfers them to the heart, which embraces them, elaborates and 
vivifies them ; but it finds, in a neighboring sphere, the rich indemni- 
ties we have just indicated. By itself alone it cannot form the 
Christian, but it prepares him ; it conducts from the natural to the 
supernatural, those whom the powerful energy of the Holy Spirit 
has not transported, without intermediate steps, into the high sphere 
of the faith of the heart. Thus the essential opposition which is 
proclaimed between reason and faith has no real existence ; they are 
two powers reigning in two distinct spheres. Those, therefore, 
who would make Christianity faith alone, and those who claim that 
it should be reason alone, are equally mistaken ; it is both ; it takes 
possession at once of thought and feeling ; it withdraws from exam- 
ination, and yields itself to it by turns ; it has its darkness and its 
light. The theologian is bound to show himself well informed ; he 
ought to conciliate to the gospel the respect of reason itself ; but he 
ought by no means to place the gospel on the same level with 
reason ; nay, he ought carefully to guard against this. 

" Between the two extremes we have exhibited, the rationalist 
preachers appear to seek a middle ground ; but he would be very 
simple who did not perceive that one of these extremes attracts them 
powerfully, and claims them wholly. How ungrateful, too, their 
task ! To reduce everything to the principles of nature is evidently 
their pretension ; to make reason usurp the place of faith, to extir- 
pate from religion, by little and little, everything serious, is the ob- 
vious aim of their labors. But when they have succeeded, they will 
find themselves, like ordinary philosophers, face to face with mystery. 
What have they gained ? Absolutely nothing ; except to have taken 
a longer and more expensive route. I suspect unbelieving logicians 
find the rationalists indifferent philosophers. 

" Is it perhaps that in rationalizing the gospel, they have found 
a system more perfect than those which philosophy can produce ? 
As to certainty, their system possesses nothing more than any other ; 
as to intrinsic value, they might find one as good and plausible, 
without making use of the gospel. That meagre Christianity which 
they put in the place of the true, has nothing peculiar or individual, 
nothing which elevates it above the theories of mere reason, They 



INTRODUCTION. XXV11 

imagine that by retrenching the facts of a transcendental sphere, that 
is to say, supernatural facts, they are merely drawing the blade from 
its scabbard ; let them say rather, they have cast away the blade, and 
that the hilt only remains in their hands. Stripped of the great fact 
of expiation, and all that cluster of ideas connected with it, what, I 
ask, is Christianity ? For ordinary minds, an ordinary morality ; for 
others, an abyss of inconsistencies.* 

" I am persuaded that true philosophers will find that evangelical 
preachers have taken a position more solid and philosophical. And 
we attach value to this suffrage ; for if philosophy as a science does 
not inspire us with much confidence, so far as it relates to the solu- 
tion of the great problem of life, it is not so with philosophy as a 
method, or with the philosophical spirit. The art of abstracting, of 
generalizing, of classifying principles, will never be disdained by en- 
lightened Christian preachers ; besides, there is a Christian philoso- 
phy. Retained within certain limits, it has its use in preaching, and 
even in life. 

" If it is a means, it ought to be employed. The times are omi- 
nous. Society is evidently in a state of crisis. Never was the im- 
potence of human wisdom, to consolidate the repose of nations and 
the welfare of humanity, more completely proved. Philosophy, de- 
serting in despair its ancient methods, is abandoning itself to mysti- 

* A striking evidence of this is found in the following passage from Lessing, a 
distinguished German critic, but unfortunately a sceptic on the subject of Christian- 
ity, as quoted by Dr. Pye Smith, in his Scripture Testimony to the Messiah, vol. 
iii. p. 236. Speaking of the liberal or rationalist divines of his country, he snys, 
"Under the pretence of making us rational Christians, they have made us most 
irrational philosophers. * * I agree with you that our old religious system is false, 
but I cannot say, as you do, that it is a botch-work of half philosophy and smatter- 
ings of knowledge. I know nothing in the world that more drew out and exercised 
a fine intellect. A botch-work of smatterings and half philosophy is that system 
of religion which people now want to set up in the place of the old one ; and with 
far more invasion upon reason and philosophy than the old one ever pretended to. 
If Christ is not the True God, the Mohammedan religion is indisputably far better 
than the Christian, and Mohammed himself was incomparably a greater and more 
honorable man than Jesus Christ ; for he was more truth-telling, more circumspect in 
what he said, and more zealous for the honor of the one and only God, than Christ 
was, who, if he did not exactly give himself out for God, yet at least said a hundred 
two-meaning things to lead simple people to think so ; while Mohammed could 
never be charged with a single instance of double-dealing in this way." How true 
it is, that to abstract the doctrines of the Godhead and atonement of Jesus Christ 
from the New Testament, is to leave it an abyss of inconsistencies ' T. 



XXV111 INTRODUCTION. 

cism. In its need of some other light than its own, it has recourse 
to revelations, it is giving itself things to believe ; it will believe them 
so long as it thinks it has invented them. It is ours to point out to 
it what has never entered the heart of man — ours to render it more 
and more sensible of that obscure want which begins to have some 
consciousness of itself, that longing to attach reason to faith, and 
science to something revealed." 

That there is a Christian philosophy, a religion of God, as far 
superior to all human philosophies and human religions as the 
heavens are higher than the earth, no believer in divine revelation 
can doubt. It is not, however, a speculation or a theory, but a system 
of absolute and authoritative truth, so simple and so practical that 
all, even the unlettered peasant and the degraded slave, can receive 
it and apply it as the power of God unto salvation. After rejecting 
with contempt the wisdom or philosophy of this world, the apostle Paul 
adds : " Howbeit. we speak wisdom (sophia) among them that are 
perfect, yet not the wisdom of this world, nor of the princes of this 
world, which come to naught ; but we speak the wisdom of God in a 
mystery." That is to say, this philosophy, or religion of God, is a 
revelation from above, or the development by God himself of what 
otherwise would be a mystery or secret, a philosophy, therefore, of 
original and positive truths, a definite, absolute, authoritative philoso- 
phy. It is thence to be received, not as a deduction of reason, but 
as an inspiration from on high, a doctrine altogether peculiar, alto- 
gether divine, " the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the hidden 
wisdom which God ordained before the world to our glory ; — for it 
is written, Eye hath not seen, ear hath not heard, neither have en- 
tered into the heart of man the things which God hath prepared for 
them that love him." These things are the original facts spoken of 
by our author, as equivalent in authority to the great intuitive truths 
which all philosophers admit without proof, and antecedent to all 
speculation. Of such revealed facts, philosophy has never dreamed. 
Her eye has never seen them. Her ear has never heard them. 
Her soul has never conceived aught even resembling them. They 
are hidden from the world entirely. For what man, to quote the 
language of St. Paul, knoweth the things of man, save the spirit of 
man that is in him ? And who but the Spirit of God knows the 



INTRODUCTION. XXIX 

things of God ? Man may know himself; man can alone know what 
passes in his own interior nature. No being in the universe, but 
God and himself, can know the facts of his own mental experience. 
But while man may be conversant with his own mind, he cannot, in 
the same sense, be conversant with the mind of God. Therefore the 
Spirit of God must give us a religion, in other words, reveal to us the 
mind of God. It is as impossible for man to give us a perfect reli- 
gion, as it is for one born blind to give us the knowledge of colors. 
It is true that man is made in the image of God ; and he may thence 
infer, in a general way, that God is an intelligent, designing, and 
governing Being, and that he will be controlled by the principles of 
righteousness and benevolence ; but a finite mind can never be the 
gauge of one that is infinite. No creature can take upon himself 
to reveal the designs, and mark out the conduct of his Creator, in all 
the possible cases in which it may be necessary for him to interpose 
in the affairs of mankind. Man may perfectly manifest himself, but 
he cannot perfectly manifest God. It would be an infinite presump- 
tion for him to announce the principles on which the Almighty will 
dispose of imperfect and sinful beings, and what provision he will 
make for them in the everlasting future. This is a matter pertain- 
ing to the Mind or Spirit of God ; it is a subject for an exclusive and 
authoritative revelation. " But God hath revealed them unto us by 
his Holy Spirit." Hence the religion of God, or Christianity, is not 
a deduction, but a testimony, not a system of opinions, but a mani- 
festation of truth. The natural man, that is, the uninspired or unen- 
lightened man, cannot know, cannot discover, " the things" of such 
a revelation ; for they are spiritually discerned. They shine only in 
their own light, can be seen only in their own light. Properly speak- 
ing, they cannot be proved, they do not need to be proved.* Like the 
sun, or the stars of heaven, they need only to be seen. They decline 
all attestation and support from man's philosophy. They infinitely 
transcend all his science and logic. In a word, they are divine, they 
proceed from the Infinite Mind, are matters of pure revelation, and 
are to be received in adoring reverence, on the simple ground of his 
indisputable authority. Man can measure the stars, and subdue the 
lightning ; he can descend into the bowels of the earth, and bring to- 



* We use the term proved here in its strict logical sense, as equivalent to demon- 
strated. No one needs to prove that the sun shines. He sees it, he feels it. 



XXX INTRODUCTION. 

gether the petrified relics of past generations, and thence write the his- 
tory of the earth's revolutions ; nay, he can analyze his own feelings, 
and construct a mental philosophy ; but he cannot enter the mind of 
God, he cannot fathom the depths of his infinite counsels. " Who by 
searching can find out God, who can find out the Almighty to perfec- 
tion ?" Who then will venture to sit in judgment on " the things that 
are freely given us of God ;" or arraign the wisdom of a scheme for 
the redemption of man originating in the mind of Jehovah ? 

Those that convey this revelation to us demand investigation as 
divine messengers. They court it even, they glory in it. For this 
purpose they present divine credentials, that is, indisputable and 
well-known facts, which can be accounted for only on the supposi- 
tion of their being supernatural or divine ; but they will not allow the 
message itself to be questioned by a human tribunal, to which, from 
the very nature of the case, it cannot submit. That message they 
convey to us as a testimony from Heaven, a philosophy from the In- 
finite, a religion from God. And who shall say that it is not reful- 
gent with the light which irradiates the eternal throne ? 

That Jesus Christ, his apostles and ministers existed, that they 
wrought stupendous miracles, that they fully authenticated their mis- 
sion, who that knows history, who that has read the New Testament, 
can doubt ? Reason decides this point, and decides it on the same 
principles on which it proves any fact in science and history. But 
the communication which these divine messengers bring to the 
world, is another thing. While it is revealed through select instru- 
mentalities, it proceeds from God, and has no taint of human imper- 
fection. In the great truths of Christianity we have absolutely and 
truly the mind of God. This was the constant claim of Christ and 
his apostles ; and if their credentials cannot be sustained, the whole 
falls to the ground as a deception or an imposture. That man who 
disputes the miracles and the historical facts, calling them myths or 
legends, denies the gospel, rejects Christianity. He makes the Son 
of God an impostor, and his apostles fanatics, fools, or knaves. He 
would leave us without a revelation, and prove himself a more honest 
and a more able man than Jesus or Paul. But the credentials of the 
Christian witnesses can be sustained, the miracles of Christ and his 
apostles can be proved. The Son of God must have risen from the 
dead ; or all history lies, all testimony is false, all virtue is a cheat. 



INTRODUCTION. XXXI 

A spiritual Christianity, and a perfect system of morals, at once 
written and embodied, is an impossibility without a historical Chris- 
tianity. It is the life without the man. As well, then, might you 
destroy the body for the purpose of saving the life, as abstract the 
soul of Christianity from the outward form in which its divine Au- 
thor enshrined it. 

Having ascertained, by means of reason, the reality of the histori- 
cal facts of Christianity, we are thus compelled to receive the rev- 
elation which it conveys to us, as the religion of God. 

Moreover, as light is made for the eyes, and thus adapts itself to 
our physical wants, long before philosophy has discovered its nature 
or analyzed its elements ; on which ground no reasoning can dis- 
prove its reality or adaptation to the purposes of vision ; so the truth as 
it is in Jesus, the light, or the love of Jehovah's heart, meets the wants 
of the soul, else dark and dead, and actually transforms it into its 
own radiant image, long before reason or philosophy can touch it, 
either for approval or disapproval. Some sceptical theorist may deny 
its divinity and power, on the ground of some preconceived notion 
or fancy of his own ; but what is that in view of the stupendous fact 
that the gospel has actually proved itself the power of God and the 
wisdom of God unto salvation ? Here is light, light divine, and all 
the reasoning in the world cannot disprove it. " God who caused 
the light to shine out of darkness hath shined into our hearts, to give 
us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus." 

Reason cannot create facts, neither can it uncreate them. It must 
take them as they are, for better or for worse ; and well for it if it 
can discover their glorious harmonies and uses. 

In a word, it is infinitely more reasonable to believe Christianity 
than to disbelieve it ; even if Christianity, in some of its aspects, 
transcends the compass and grasp of the finite intellect. It is a fact, 
clear as the sunshine, evident as the day ; though, like that sunshine* 
it come from the depths of heaven, or like that day, it rest in the 
bosom of an infinite night. 

And if Christianity be a revelation of the Divine Wisdom, we may 
well ask, Shall " the mind of God" permit itself to be questioned by 
the mind of man ? Shall the decisions of infinite wisdom appear be- 
fore a human tribunal ? Shall a divine philosophy, a method of par- 
don and eternal life from God himself, be submitted to the meagre 



XXX11 INTRODUCTION. 

philosophy and the petty logic of the men of this world ? Shall the 
gospel of Christ the religion of the ever-blessed God, bow down and 
do homage to the gross materialism of one set of philosophers, or the 
transcendental mysticism of another ? Above all, shall it be forced 
to cast off all its glories, and lie in the dust, a withered and degraded 
thing, to gratify the pride of some rhapsodizing spiritualist, who be- 
lieves himself wiser than Christ and all his apostles ? No ! the 
foolishness of God is wiser than man, and the weakness of God is 
stronger than man. Christianity is either true or false, divine or 
human. If true, if divine, it is absolutely true, absolutely divine. 
It is a matter of infinite obligation, and must be received in all its 
length and breadth of authority and application. We do not want 
simply to think, to hope, to imagine ; we want to know, to believe, 
to rejoice. In man, however, we can never confide. A philosophy 
either all human, or half human and half divine, we cannot trust. 
We need a religion from God, an absolute religion, a perfect and in- 
destructible faith, a religion for life, a religion for death, a religion 
for immortality ; so that " our faith may stand, not in the wisdom of 
man, but in the power of God." With this, we shall be safe ; with 
this, happy and triumphant, 

" Amid the wreck of matter and the crash of worlds !" 

The world by wisdom never knew God, never can know God. 
All attempts to discover, that is, to work out and excogitate a per- 
fect religion, must, from the nature of the case, prove utter failures. 
In fact, the thing involves an impossibility ; for as water can never 
rise above its own level — since the part is never equal to the whole 
— since imperfection and sin can never comprehend the infinite and 
the holy — so man can never give us the knowledge of the true God 
and eternal life. Never can he solve the mighty problem, " How 
shall man be just with God ;" how shall the unclean unite itself 
with the pure, the finite with the infinite, the fallen with God ? The 
Father of spirits must himself interpose, and give us such clear and 
explicit information that no sincere and humble man may err upon 
points of such vast and thrilling interest. 

If, then, philosophy cannot discover a perfect religion, it cannot 
certainly modify and improve the one already given us by God. 
Like the sun, this may have its obscurities, nay, it may be dark from 



INTRODUCTION. XXX111 

excess of brightness. But this is no more than might have been ex- 
pected. Indeed, this very circumstance is one of the most striking 
evidences of its divinity. A religion from God must have its aspect 
of mystery and difficulty. It belongs to the infinite, it runs into 
eternity. Its truths are the stars of a boundless expanse, and are 
set in a firmament of gloom. All nature is mysterious ; but who 
would think of improving it 1 Can any one give sweeter hues to 
the rose of Sharon or the lily of the valley ? Can he whiten the 
driven snow, or impart a deeper blue to the arch of heaven ? Can 
he give a nobler curve to the neck of the war-horse, or add a more 
beautiful green to the grass of the fields ? Can he dispose the stars 
above him in more perfect order, or add a deeper lustre to their sil- 
very light ? What, then, can speculative philosophy do for the 
Christian religion ? What can reason add to the power of God, and 
the wisdom of God ? Above all, shall philosophy dare to remove a 
single tint, a single leaf or flower, not to speak of a branch or limb, 
from the great Christian tree ? Shall we permit it to tarnish the 
glory of God manifest in the flesh, the work of Christ's atoning sac- 
rifice, or the beauty and perfection of the new-born soul ? No ! it 
has nothing to do with religion but to adore it, to fall prostrate at the 
feet of the Son of God, and " crown him Lord of all." 

And yet, speculative philosophy has ever been tampering with 
Christianity, ever debasing its purity, ever weakening its power. By 
commingling her own imaginations with the plain declarations of 
the word of God, she has produced what Lord Bacon calls " mala 
sana admixtio" infinitely worse than positive error itself; for the 
corruption of a good thing, as Horace suggests, ever becomes the 
worst of all. Nay more, philosophy has even asserted a sort of su- 
premacy over Christianity, now modifying this, now changing that, 
now adding one feature, and then abstracting another, till religion, 
in her hands, has been transformed from an angel of light into a 
hideous phantom or an unsubstantial ghost. What ! human phi- 
losophy superior to religion ! Human reason above divine ! Why, 
that is to cast down Jehovah from his supremacy, and exalt man to 
the throne. 

But what is philosophy ? The speculations of one man, and noth- 
ing more. In its last analysis it is reduced to this. For it has no ex- 
istence separate from the mind of an individual, and no authority but 
2 # 



XXXIV INTRODUCTION. 

what it derives from this source. It is the system of Spinoza or of 
Descartes, of Leibnitz or of Wolf, of Kant or of Hegel, of Locke or 
of Helvetius. It is the notions, perhaps, of Jouffroy, of Cousin, of 
Carlyle, or of some inferior spirits. A number of such persons may 
unite in defending their favorite theories or peculiarities. They may 
form a school, and give currency to a system ; but their combination, 
in this case, gives their opinions no additional authority. They are 
still the speculations or notions of distinct and independent individ- 
uals. To be received they must pass into other individual minds, 
into mine or thine, as it may happen, and thus possess no weight ex- 
cept as the probable reasoning or plausible speculations of a single 
fallible intellect. They may be true, but they are just as likely to 
be false, nay, they are more likely to be false than true. Hence they 
are ever fluctuating and passing away. One theory supersedes an- 
other, and all become feeble and effete with age. Time will devour 
the whole of them. And the reason of this is found in the simple 
fact that they consist of speculations on subjects and relations which 
lie beyond the bounds of the finite mind, and in nine cases out of ten, 
are but the splendid imaginings of gifted but erring men. In such 
a case, then, to assume a superiority over the religion of God, is to 
deify the individual reason, to dethrone God and worship self. 

Reason, as Vinet clearly shows, has her province, and a noble 
one it is. It is hers to examine the credentials of the divine messen- 
gers, to question their character and purposes, to hear the voice of 
God, and in some cases to explain and enforce its meaning ; for she 
is conversant with man, in whose language God speaks to us, and 
with whose modes of thought, feeling, and expression, reason is en- 
tirely familiar. It is hers to admire and develop the beauty and har- 
mony of the religion of God when received and authenticated ; — to 
trace the connections of its various parts, the analogy of its principles 
to the teachings of nature, and the consistency of its facts with the 
profoundest experience of the human heart. Reason has been called 
" lucerna Dei," and " the candle of the Lord within us ;" but certainly 
it is not fitted to illuminate the sun. It has also been denominated 
" the eye of the soul," and if it is so, most assuredly its proper func- 
tion is simply to receive the light, npt to rningle jt with its own vi- 
sions and obscurities. In that light it may see things new and strange^ 
perhaps startling, nevertheless it must receive them without a murs 



INTRODUCTION. XXXV 

mur. It is not placed in the soul to create the light, or to change it 
in any way, but to receive it as it shines from the heaven of heavens. 

But men talk of reason as if it were a God, as if they themselves 
were God ; and thence plunge headlong into the infinite ocean of 
speculation and uncertainty. In their adventurous course, their 
heated imagination may see many strange sights, and their pen may 
describe them in language of surpassing eloquence ; but they will 
soon find themselves in the very abyss of doubt, perhaps of despair. 
Indeed we learn, from the whole experience of the past, that the aban- 
donment of an authoritative revelation, and an eager and consistent 
pursuit of what is called " the truth," meaning by this the absolute 
nature of things, ever conducts to infidelity or mysticism, to transcen- 
dental and impalpable spiritualism, or to absolute and atheistic doubt. 

For the same reason, much of the religion which is popular and 
fashionable in certain quarters, or what is sometimes dignified with 
the title of rational Christianity, is not religion, but philosophy, not 
absolute faith, but human opinion. It consists, perhaps, of an ad- 
mixture of philosophical speculation with Christianity, or it is Chris- 
tianity eviscerated and withered by the refining process of rationalistic 
criticism. Hence it is ever changing in its character, and gradually 
but irresistibly tends to infidelity, to whose ranks it is constantly 
transferring its votaries. It is ever learning, ever advancing and 
improving, as its abettors would say, but never comes to the knowl- 
edge of the truth. In one case, it is transcendentalism and the gos- 
pel, in another, materialism and Christianity ; in a third, a vague 
mixture of all sorts of notions ; and in a fourth, a single feature or 
element of the gospel, surrounded with the grossest scepticism, like 
a single tree or fountain in a boundless desert. 

How clear, then, it is, that we need to be believers, not specula- 
tors ; men of God, not mere philosophers. The soul of man longs for 
certainty and rest, absolute security and untroubled repose. Where 
shall we find it ? In the dreams of speculative philosophy ? In 
transcendental mysticism ? In cold and heartless rationalism ? In 
the endless diversities, the beautiful but ever-shifting visions of ra- 
tional or liberal Christianity ? No ! but in the cross of Christ ; in 
the atonement and intercession of the great Mediator ; in that good 
hope through grace, inspired, not put, begotten, not made, by the in- 
dwelling Spirit of the Son of God. 



XXXVI INTRODUCTION. 

The importance of these principles is receiving the most striking 
illustrations in the present day. Not understanding them, and not 
finding sure anchorage in the haven of absolute and authoritative 
revelation, some are driven abroad upon the open sea of conjecture 
and doubt ; now impelled towards the rocks of infidelity, now ima- 
gining they have discovered the promised land, the Eldorado of 
philosophy and religion, in some new and visionary theory, or in 
some singular and unheard-of system of biblical interpretation ; then 
contending with the waves of scepticism ; and finally engulfed in 
the roaring surge of atheism and despair. One rejects the divinity 
and inspiration of Christ, justification by faith, and the regeneration 
of the soul by the Holy Spirit ; — and, in order to maintain his theory, 
casts away some portions of the word of God, and subjects others to 
a most tortuous and ungenerous criticism. Another spiritualizes the 
whole, and establishes his philosophy or his creed on the ruins of 
common sense and all established principles of scriptural criticism. 
While a third, wiser forsooth than all the rest ! rejects one half of 
the word of God as puerile, and makes myths and legends of the 
rest ; casts away the prophecies and the miracles ; denies the incar- 
nation and resurrection of Christ ; insists that Jesus was only a man, 
a good and a noble-hearted man, but nothing more ; maintains that 
other Christs may yet arise, greater even than he was, that all Chris- 
tianity is transient, except one or two great principles ; and hence 
pours contempt on the mediation and atonement of Christ, which the 
whole company of apostles, and the church of all ages, have regard- 
ed as the power of God and the wisdom of God unto salvation ! 

Others there are, who, after infinite wanderings, and the most 
strange and startling changes, " ever learning, but never coming to 
the knowledge of the truth," like Cain, vagabonds in the realm of 
spiritual things, seeking rest and finding none, finally abandon the 
pursuit as hopeless, and neglecting the great salvation, rush into the 
open arms of Rome, renounce their individuality, and find repose in 
the absolute and infallible dogmas of a corrupt and superstitious 
church. Such persons may imagine they have entered a magnificent 
palace, but it will be found that they are enclosed within the walls 
of a horrid prison. They have mistaken the despotism of man for 
the religion of God. 

We have been constrained to make these remarks introductory to 



INTRODUCTION. XXXV11 

the following work, because we deem them of moment at the pres- 
ent time, and in the hope that they may dispose some to read, with 
greater interest, its lucid and striking delineations of the religion of 
God. 

As to the translation, we may be permitted to say that we have 
endeavored to steer a middle course between a rigidly literal, and a 
very free version. It has been our aim, as much as possible, to pre- 
serve the peculiarities of the author ; but we have not felt ourselves 
bound, in every case, to give the exact turn or order of expression, 
particularly in those cases where a literal rendering would have been 
a bad, or a clumsy one. Still, in several instances, we have retained 
the French idiom, believing that its occasional use gives interest and 
vivacity to the translation. Vinet is by no means an easy author to 
translate. The original and philosophical cast of his thoughts, the 
delicacy of his conceptions, and the refined but beautiful turns of 
his expression, are not easy to transfer into clear and elegant En- 
glish. Indeed, a perfect rendering of any book is scarcely attainable, 
but an approximation to it may be made by repeated efforts. After 
all, much of the beauty and power of a great and original work must 
be lost by the transference, like the delicate bloom of flowers, which 
is liable to vanish in the process of transplantation. But we have 
done what we could to present the thoughts and expression of our 
author to English readers ; and " we cast it into the world," to use 
his own words, " commending it to the Divine blessing, which can 
cause some fruits of holiness and peace to spring from it for the 
benefit of the Christian Church." • . 

Hartford, 1850. 



MO NT AIGNE; 



WITH 



THE ENDLESS STUDY, and OTHER MISCELLANIES. 



MONTAIGNE;" 

OR, THE NATURE AND PRINCIPLE OF MORALITY. 

(FROM "ESSAIS DE PHILOSOPH1E MORALE.") 



We have endeavored to satisfy ourselves as to the 
causes of the popularity of certain authors, who are not 
only relished by the public as writers, but treated as in- 
timate friends, and towards whom a sentiment more 
affectionate than admiration is incessantly attracting 
readers. Montaigne, La Fontaine, Madame De Se- 
vigne, and Voltaire, are of this class. There is a 
charm, doubtless, in the frank ingenuousness of the first 
three, and in the elegant and lucid simplicity of the last 
— a charm that may help to explain why in all times, 
they have been the favorites of the public ; but the 
greater portion of that favor is due to another cause. 
All four are, with reference to moral ideas, on a level 
with the majority of their readers ; all four, devoted to 
the world, without having repudiated all ideas of duty 
and propriety, prescribing to each of us precisely what 
we should have prescribed to ourselves, or what nature 
inspires — enemies to excess in virtue as well as in vice 
— partisans of the golden mean, which is the soft orna- 

* For some account of Montaigne and his writings, see Sketch at the 
close of this essay, p. 56. 



42 vinet's miscellanies. 

ment of the civilized world — expert in rendering us 
satisfied with ourselves, dispensing us from toils and 
struggles, they marvellously flatter our spiritual indo- 
lence, but without revolting our moral sentiment.* Is 
it surprising, then, that they please us ? Is it not by 
just such means we are pleased in society ? Are not 
the persons whose intercourse attracts us, fashioned 
precisely after this model ? Besides, we have, in favor 
of our explanation, direct proof — the proof of fact. 
Who does not know, that it is this very want of firm- 
ness in moral doctrines, this exquisite tolerance which 
endures the evil as well as the good, this preference 
given to natural qualities over acquired virtues, which 
is most earnestly praised in La Fontaine, in Madame 
Sevigne, and especially in Montaigne ? 

Read the panegyrists of this last writer ; you will find 
them conceding praise to that in him which is really 
deserving of reprehension — the want of fixedness and 
rigor of morals. They prove, by this means, that they 
themselves are wanting in the fixed and immutable prin- 
ples, the absence of which is characteristic of Montaigne. 
Otherwise, they would have condemned the looseness of 
his doctrines — nay, they would have gone further, as far 
as we claim to go to-day, and affirmed that in Mon- 
taigne's book there is, properly speaking, no morality. 

They would have come to this conclusion, from the 
manner in which he treats the idea of God. 

In his essays, Montaigne speaks frequently of God, 
but nowhere as the source whence our obedience to 
the moral law derives its sanction. 

It is on this ground we maintain that he has no mo- 
rality ; as we shall endeavor to prove, by considering 

* Exceptis Excipiendis. 



MONTAIGNE ON MORALITY. 43 

morality : first, with reference to its extent ; secondly, 
with reference to its principle or its nature. 

What is the extent or sphere of morality ? Once set 
aside the idea of God, what shall we say ? Where find 
a measure that shall not be arbitrary ? What is the 
maxim, however vast, that does not admit of the suppo- 
sition, beyond its sphere, of indefinite developments? 
What principle includes all which obedience to God can 
include — all, indeed, which it necessarily embraces? 
To do to others nothing which we would not have 
them do to us ; to do to others everything that we 
would have them do to us — these comprehend only the 
morality of the social relations. Moreover, how can we 
know, with reference to the second of these maxims, 
whence to deduce such a morality ? We seem to see 
in it only a sublime absurdity, or a wandering ray from 
the morality of angels, or a lost fragment of religion. 
To live conformably to our nature, another vaunted 
maxim, is only a vicious circle. What is our nature ? 
Who knows it ? — who, at least, knows our origin ? 
Who can remount to our origin, without remounting 
to God ? Who can remount to God, without recogniz- 
ing the fact, that to him must be referred, and from 
him derived, all morality worthy of the name ? The 
standard of morality, then, is vague, arbitrary, and in 
every sense limited, so long as we cannot comprehend 
it with relation to the Author of the Universe, and, so 
to speak, from the summit of Divinity. This idea is 
the only one which envelops man entire, the only one 
which develops man entire, the only one which illumi- 
nates and controls his whole nature. God is, in the 
moral world, what his sun is in the physical world: 
" Nothing is hid from the heat thereof." 



44 vinet's miscellanies. 

From what other source can we take the standard of 
morality ? Can we take it from the idea of mo- 
rality ? It is true, we feel vaguely that morality is 
the law of perfection ; true, that from the very impossi- 
bility of assigning it a limit, we conclude that it is un- 
limited ; true, that we find it easier to deny it than to 
restrict it; and certainly no one can propose to be im- 
perfect. But one of two things is true : either the idea 
of God, previously formed, causes us to measure the ex- 
tent of the moral law, and proportions it to our senti- 
ments and will ; in which case, we have the proof we 
sought ; or the moral law faithfully followed, from height 
to height, must cause us to gravitate towards God, who 
then becomes to us an immutable centre and point of 
observation. In both cases, the idea of perfection 
shows itself inseparable from that of God; and it may 
be affirmed, that he whose moral determinations do not 
take their departure from God, nor return to God, can- 
not have perfection for his measure of morality. 

He can have for his measure only man in general, or 
some individual in particular, or himself. 

But these diverse steps represent only illusive distan- 
ces. Detached from the supreme platform, which is 
God, man must slide from one point of descent to anoth- 
er, till he comes to the lowest, which is his individuality. 
Man in general ! But where is man in general ? On 
what ground should that uncertain type be offered to us 
as the standard of human duty ? And how shall a sin- 
gle individual dare to offer himself as such a standard ? 
In vain does man, fallen from the summit, hold back, 
and clinging, try to suspend himself a few moments 
upon that steep declivity ; the law of gravity drags him 
to the bottom, where he finds a sort of station or basis, 



MONTAIGNE ON MORALITY. 45 

the last of the whole, which we will call individuality, 
and which, under the different names of character, tem- 
perament, natural constitution, forms, in the last analy- 
sis, the morality of those who have not God. Thence 
morality is not the imprint of a common type, but the 
simple portrait of the individual, and so far from the law 
serving as a standard to the individual, it is the individ- 
ual who serves as a standard to the law. 

In all cases, indeed, to suppose it possible for the in- 
dividual to find and submit to a law which is not him- 
self, and which is not God, to give himself a morality 
greater than himself, and yet without being infinite, we 
should say, is not only to be beneath God, but beneath 
perfection, even if he should measure his morality by 
that of an angel ; and being placed beneath perfection, 
is to be without the sphere of morality altogether. 

Montaigne has exemplified all the consequences of 
the abandonment of this great idea. He has taken in 
himself, in his own individuality, the measure of the law 
by which he would be governed. So that his morality, 
in all the strictness of the term, is only the morality of 
Montaigne, the morality of his character, of his tem- 
perament, of his education ; in a word, it is Montaigne 
himself, neither more nor less. Indeed, he neither im- 
poses upon himself nor upon others in this respect. He 
takes no pains to conceal this fact; he claims, that 
" man is far gone to conform his obligation to the reason 
of any other being but his own." Thus we may expect 
to find in his morality both good and evil, both strength 
and weakness, both severity and laxity, following what- 
ever his nature borrows from the one or other of these 
tendencies. Nor is this expectation disappointed, for 
such is Montaigne ; his moral ideas, incoherent, incon- 



46 VINET S MISCELLANIES. 

sistent, and grotesque, have no other centre than his 
own individuality — a happy one, we grant, in the esti- 
mation of many. 

Let us now change the point of view, and consider 
morality in its nature. 

Considered in its nature, morality is obedience to the 
law of duty. 

The idea of duty involves, necessarily, that of obliga- 
tion towards an authority beyond us and above us. 

Now what authority can we obey, if we obey not 
God?— 

Interest ? that is to say, ourselves. 

Instinct ? that is to say, ourselves. 

Habit ? that is to say, ourselves. 

That is to say, that we do not obey at all. 

We often hear persons speak of duties to themselves, 
an idea to which may correspond that of obedience to 
themselves ; but who would take literally and seriously 
this figure or play of words ? The expression is self- 
contradictory ; the moment one obeys himself he ceases 
to obey, and a duty which one believes to have refer- 
ence purely and exclusively to himself, is no duty at all. 
It is unnecessary to insist upon this. But interest, in- 
stinct, habit, are the Me (our own personality) seen on 
three different sides ; or, if you please, these are forces 
to which we yield, but not authorities which we obey ; 
and so true is this that duty, in the majority of cases, 
consists precisely in resisting interest, instinct, and habit. 

It would be contradictory to place an idea of duty in 
obedience to the tendencies, the repression of which 
constitutes duty itself. 

Pardon me, says Montaigne, there is a conscience. 
We obey conscience. 



MONTAIGNE ON MORALILY. 47 

It is in point to observe here that Montaigne, in many 
places, speaks of conscience as a reality, while in oth- 
ers he speaks of it as the fruit of custom.* This uncer- 
tainty ought not to surprise us ; it is easy to fall into it 
(as is too often done) whenever conscience is confounded 
with the moral law. The moral law, body of notions, ob- 
ject composite, which on one side combines with our sen- 
timents, on the other with external things, is for this very 
reason, capable of alteration, and has suffered much 
from the corruption of man. Conscience, a simple fac- 
ulty, an elementary principle, has remained intact. It 
is nothing but the sentiment of obligation in its greatest 
purity, in its most abstract state. 

Whatever it may be, since the idea of obligation is 
found at the basis of every definition of conscience, it 
follows, that, in every case, morality which is obedience 
to conscience, is obedience to the sentiment of obligation. 
Thus we find ourselves brought back to obligiation, a 
relative idea, an idea which supposes a duality, that is 
to say, a subject and an object. 

In recognizing conscience, you recognize that you 
are under obligation ; but to whom ? 

To God, or to yourself? 

If to yourself, we have already seen that this is no 
obligation at all. 

If, however, you continue to feel yourself bound by 
obligation, that obligation must find an object, and that 
object can be no other than God. 

But you resist, you reclaim against this. " No," say 
you, " the object of our obedience is neither ourselves, 
nor God ; it is the good. Why substitute God for the 

* Essais, 54, I. chap. 22, 



48 vinet's miscellanies. 

good ? Why introduce into morality a foreign element ? 
Why transform it into religion ? 

First, on the supposition that God exists, we must neces- 
sarily admit, either that the good does not exist, or that it 
exists in him ; for to conceive of God, is to conceive of a 
centre where every will gravitates ; for if we refuse to 
God the character of being the source and principle of 
good, we not only strip him of his glory, but of his na- 
ture, nay, of his very being ; for a God to whom every- 
thing does not tend, is nothing.* 

We substitute God for good, in order to put a reality 
in the place of an idea ; for good is only an attribute, 
a quality, a mode of being, which supposes a subject. 
If the good can dwell in us who are created beings, it is 
because it dwells primarily in an uncreated Being, 
from whom everything is derived ; and thence, to re- 
mount to perfect good, we must remount to God. 

We substitute God for good, because it is not in the 
order of things to be responsible to an idea ; because 
the living substance of an idea, the being who possesses 
the idea as a quality having vanished, all sanction of 
that idea, all guaranty of its existence or force vanishes 
also ; because the substance of that idea is not beyond 
our me, (our individual personality,) it is our me (person- 
ality) itself; and the source of good being adorable, in the 
true sense of the term, it clearly follows that there is no 
choice between adoring ourselves or adoring God. 

There are many other reasons for substituting God 
for good ; but we designedly exclude from a discussion 
purely metaphysical, proofs of a practical kind ; we con- 

* The word tend, which is very expressive here, is used as equivalent 
to refer or relate, only it indicates the intimate nature and strength of 
the relation. God is the centre of all things. — T. 



MONTAIGNE ON MORALITY. 49 

tent ourselves with appealing to the nature of things, 
and resuming what we have already said, ask two 
questions. Is the voice of conscience ourselves, or 
something above ourselves ? Is that which binds and 
controls us in spite of our wishes, our tastes, our most 
pressing interests — is it the me, or the not me ?* If it 
is the not me, as it is impossible to doubt, is not that 
not me, God ? If conscience is the ambassador of 
God, is it possible to receive the ambassador and 
reject the sovereign ? Is it not a mockery, to admit 
the conscience, and set aside God? For when the 
conscience has nothing to appeal to, when its letters of 
credit are torn to pieces, what is to prevent us from 
rejecting it w T ith contempt ? Upon this point we should 
be ashamed to say another word. 

Let us add, however, a fact of great interest ; three 
fourths of mankind instinctively adhere to the position 
we maintain ; for, says M. Cousin, " three fourths of 
mankind have no morality but that of religion," — that 
is to say, three fourths of mankind have no other con- 
ception of morality, which is perfectly true. The 
other fourth do not thus judge of it ; they have intel- 
lect enough to inpose silence on the voice of nature ; 
but the instinct which demands a God is more imposing 
than the subtilty which rejects him ! 

If any one who cares nothing for God, persists in re- 
taining, in his vocabulary, the words, conscience and 
moral obligation, you may well tell him that such invol- 
untary persistence reveals to him a God, to whose ex- 
istence he is compelled to render testimony ; and that 
he cannot, therefore, too soon hasten to put God in the 
place, or rather at the head of these abstract ideas. 

* Our own personality, or something else ? 

a 



50 VINET S MISCELLANIES. 

Let us return to Montaigne. To make a morality 
conformable to, or identical with his temperament, it 
was necessary, first, to disencumber himself of God ; 
an easy matter, silence alone sufficed ; but what was 
more difficult was to rid himself of the idea of death ; 
but this idea carefully pondered, includes or suggests 
all those infinite ideas, the foundation of which the 
author was so careful to sweep away. There would 
be no pressing reason to introduce God into life, if life 
were to last forever ; but it has an end, an end myste- 
rious, foreboding and full of fears. Here God is neces- 
sary; this idea returns whatever we do; death calls 
back upon the scene that august name, and with it re- 
turns morality, not that of temperament, but of perfec- 
tion. Death then is Montaigne's enemy ; he has done 
nothing to rid himself of that ; he must try, therefore, 
to kill death, by tearing from him his sting, but in a 
way which is not that of St. Paul. 

All he will have to do will be, to put it into the head 
of people that death is a final end, and that there is no- 
thing after. And as that is not peculiarly agreeable at 
first blush, he will put in requisition all his powers, to 
prevent the horrible and appalling dread of annihilation 
from succeeding, in the soul, to the terrors of final 
judgment, which he has just succeeded in dissipating. 

Do we calumniate him ? In that case we can say, 
that he was willing to do so. 

How can it be reasonably supposed that a religious 
man, a Christian, having to fortify his soul against the 
fear of death, should refer to none of those consoling 
ideas which religion opposes to the terrors of the last 
day? 

How not accuse of materialism a man who, to re- as- 



MONTAIGNE ON MORALITY. 51 

sure you with reference to death, should tell you that it 
was a part of the universal order of things ; that one 
may blunt its point, by trying it habitually against his 
heart ; that death combines many things with which we 
are very familiar, such as sleep and fainting, being itself 
only a slumber more profound, a swoon more complete ? 
Buffon, employing the same kind of arguments, ex- 
claims, " Why fear death ?" but adds, from a regard 
to the Sorbonne, and his own tranquillity, " if we 
have only lived well," a restriction at once prudent 
and pleasing, of which we defy any one to find an 
equivalent in the author of the Essays. However, if 
he did not put it into his book, he took care to put into 
his life something which might take its place. Like 
Buffon, he also had his parenthesis, a little different, per- 
haps, namely : "if one live well with the church," or 
rather, " if one die in the church" And indeed, it was 
thus he died, to the great consolation of many people, 
who have no doubt, even in the presence of his writings, 
that he was a good Christian at heart. He had certainly 
promised himself such an end ; he made his calculations 
to die a Christian. " At the very commencement," says 
he, " of the fevers and maladies which attack me, 
being yet in fair health, I reconcile myself to God by 
Christian rites, and find myself more free and easy. . . 
Let us live and enjoy ourselves among our friends ; let 
us die and grow gloomy among strangers ; by paying 
for it, one finds those who write his will, and those who 
anoint his feet"* 

* It is well known that Montaigne, after indulging a boundless scep- 
ticism, and jesting at all things serious and divine, on his deathbed called 
for the priests of the papal church, and partook of the sacrament, and 
extreme unction. — T. 



52 VINET S MISCELLANIES. 

These citations will surprise some persons, and they 
may ask. how can they be reconciled with the pains 
which Montaigne takes to withdraw from the Supreme 
Being the government of human life ? That is a psycho- 
logical phenomenon which deserves our serious regard. 

About the sixteenth century, doctrine and morality, 
which in religion form a whole, for religion is only the 
fusion of these two elements, were found deplorably 
severed ; the one went in one direction, the other in an- 
other. To believe and to live, had become two things, 
distinct and independent. Thus separated, doctrine 
was nothing more than a hieroglyph, without a key ; 
morality a law, without a true sanction. Thereupon, 
men had to choose between two parts : either to re- 
establish the broken unity, or to consummate the sepa- 
ration. The reformers chose the first part ; the free- 
thinkers, the second. The latter commenced by 
making a solemn reserve with reference to the ancient 
faith, of which they hoped to avail themselves in the 
hour of need, and to which, in other respects, custom 
bound them. Resembling those persons who, wishing 
to run across the fields, begin by carefully securing the 
house, but in order to be able to return, in case of storm 
or danger, carry off the key in their pocket, they began 
to philosophize and moralize on all the subjects of their 
investigations, as freely as if the religion they professed 
were nothing but a statue. Always good Catholics, 
they did not hesitate in their writings to become deists, 
materialists, and, in a few cases, atheists ; the whole 
without regard to consequences ; so that in the same in- 
dividual there were two beings, side by side, who took 
the greatest care not to elbow each other — the man of 
custom and calculation, who was catholic, and the man 



MONTAIGNE ON MORALILY. 53 

of thought, who was everything else. Some of them 
might be seen, tossing their words by turns in opposite 
directions. Occasionally, the cassock of the ecclesias- 
tic covered a philosopher, who demolished, in his secu- 
lar habit, what he had established in his black robe, and 
that without scruple, without the slightest conscious- 
ness of inconsistency. Such was Charron, " who, 
having an eloquent tongue, was employed in preaching 
the word of God, and confirmed the wavering in the 
faith." This same Charron did not the less write the 
book called Wisdom, (Sagesse,) which brought him so 
much applause from the sceptics of the eighteenth cen- 
tury. In the preface to Wisdom, he informs us " that 
this work, which instructs us to live well, is entitled 
Wisdom, as the preceding one, which instructed us to 
believe, was called Truth."* Speaking in another 

* Charron had previously published a work called Verite, or Truth. 
The following account of Charron is from Dugald Stewart's Preliminary 
Dissertations on the History of Metaphysical and Ethical Science, p. 
12T : " Charron is well known as the chosen friend of Montaigne's 
latter years, and as the confidential depositary of his philosophical sen- 
timents. Endowed with talents far inferior in force and originality to 
those of his master, he possessed, nevertheless, a much sounder and 
more regulated judgment ; and as his reputation, notwithstanding the 
liberality of some of Ms peculiar tenets, was high among the most re- 
spectable divines of his own church, it is far from improbable, that Mon- 
taigne committed to him the guardianship of his posthumous fame, from 
motives similar to those which influenced Pope in selecting Warburton 
as his literary executor. The discharge of this trust, however, seems to 
have done less good to Montaigne than harm to Charron ; for while the 
unlimited scepticism, and the indecent levities of the former were viewed 
by the zealous of those days with a smile of tenderness and indulgence, 
the slighter heresies of the latter were marked with a severity the more 
rigorous and unrelenting, that, in points of essential importance, they 
deviated so little from the standard of the Catholic faith." The state- 
ment in the last sentence is to be received with some modification ; for 



54 VINET S MISCELLANIES. 

place, of piety and virtue, he wishes "that each may sub- 
sist and sustain itself without the aid of the other, act- 
ing solely from its own principle." Is not this sufficiently 
clear ? Besides, this book, as a whole, is an indirect 
refutation of Christianity, and contains maxims hostile 
to religion, even in the broadest sense of the term. 
Some were scandalized by it ; but others, good Catho- 
lics, were not at all ; they saw no inconsistency between 
the robe of Charron and his book, between his first and 
his last work ; and in their view, the censurers of Wis- 
dom were " either malignant or superstitious persons, 
who had a spirit, low, feeble, and flat." 

Strange condition of souls ! but it is not peculiar to 
the age of Montaigne and Charron. The same schism 
between faith and morality exists in many who have 
taken the same part as those two philosophers. 
Christians in the church, pagans at home ; believers by 
profession, infidels in reality ; retaining the received 
creed, yet holding opinions which destroy it ; and all 
this without the slightest consciousness or suspicion of 
the fact. What, I ask you, more common than this ? 
But to return to Montaigne. A judicious critic, who 
professes, on most occasions, great respect for religion, 
has said, that Montaigne appears to rise above himself, 
when he exhorts us to fortify our souls against the fear 
of death. We too are of that opinion ; Montaigne is 
nowhere richer, more varied, and eloquent. But how 
comes it to pass, that the ingenious critic, neither here 

Charron, in his day, certainly enjoyed the favor and confidence of the 
great majority of his Catholic brethren, and even of learned theologians. 
His philosophy was simply that of Montaigne methodized, and is equally 
inconsistent with the pure and disinterested morality of the Christian 

faith.— T. 



MONTATGNE ON MORALITY. 55 

nor there, has called our attention to the fact, that these 
passages, so beautiful in form, go to the extinction of all 
religious morality ; and that it is the intense desire to 
attain that mournful end, which renders those pages of 
Montaigne so eloquent ? How has the same writer no- 
where remarked that the morality of Montaigne is 
without any philosophical as well as religious basis ? # 
Here we cannot refrain from observing a curious fact. 
It is, that morality as a science does not exist among 
us, since the retreat of religious beliefs ; that in the 
midst of the revival of philosophical duties, their high- 

* The critic referred to is Villemain, who, in his ' ; Discours et Melan- 
ges Litteraires," has said many fine things of the character and genius 
of Montaigne. He admits, after all, that the morality of his favorite 
is " Epicurean," and " proposes pleasure as its final aim," not indeed 
vicious, but virtuous pleasure, or what he terms such ; so that virtue itself 
is only " a pleasant and gay quality, — qualite plaisante and gaie." " The 
morality of Montaigne," he says, " doubtless is not sufficiently perfect 
for Christians." " It is not founded upon self-denial, — Tabnegation de 
soi meme." His morality is good so far as it goes, good as prudence 
perhaps, or, if you please, wisdom, not good for Christians, and, conse- 
quently, incapable of producing self-denial and disinterestedness, heroic 
or martyr virtue. If it corrects us, it does so without producing humil- 
ity or penitence. It lops off a few broken twigs, but leaves the tree with 
its old nature. So that Villemain has well remarked, that Montaigne 
"corrects without humbling us, — nous corrige sans nous humilier." 
While Villemain admits Montaigne's Pyrrhonism, he maintains that he 
believed in " God and in virtue." That is admitted ; but the question 
arises, how did he believe in God and in virtue ? Does he refer all ac- 
tions to God ? No. Does he derive his morality from God ? No. Is 
his virtue more than that of Epicurus ? No. All this Villemain virtu- 
ally admits. As to Montaigne's views of death, the very best thing that 
Villemain can quote from him on this subject is the following : " Sortez 
de ce monde comme vous y etes entre ; le meme passage, que votes avez fait 
de la mort a la vie, sans passions et sans frayeur, refaites-le de la vie a. 
la mort. Voire mort est une des pieces de Vordre de Vunivers, une piece 
de la vie du monde!' — T. 



56 SKETCH OF MONTAIGNE- 

est branch, moral philosophy, is nearly withered, and 
that its place is marked as a blank in the picture of the 
intellectual activity of France.* This fact deserves 
attention. 

The principal object of this essay has been to show 
that morality, taken in its true nature and in its whole 
extent, is compelled to find in God the first ring upon 
which to suspend its chain. If it be objected to us, and 
we earnestly desire that it may, that the idea of God 
is not God, and if the theory of morality has need of the 
idea of God, it is God himself that the moral life has 
need of, we admit its force, nay, contend for the fact 
upon which it is based, as a fundamental principle. 

* We ought, nevertheless, to refer -with gratitude to the admirable 
■work of M. de G-erando on Moral Improvement. 



SKETCH OF MONTAIGNE. 

BY THE TRANSLATOR. 

We add a few notices of Montaigne, for the sake of 
those not familiar with his life and writings. They may 
serve, perhaps, to elucidate and enforce the principles 
of the preceding essay. We must confess, however, to 
some predilection for Montaigne, notwithstanding his 
admitted and glaring faults. His shrewd sense, happy 
temperament, bizarre humor, racy style, and even bound- 
less egotism, have a charm. His conduct as a man of 
the world was fair, almost unexceptionable, that is, as 
things generally go in this strange world of ours. He 
had certainly frankness and genius, immense powers of 
description, epigram, and gossip, all of which he mingles 



SKETCH OF MONTAIGNE. 57 

indiscriminately in his writings. His essays have rare 
freshness and vigor. They abound in strange and stri- 
king thoughts, original conceptions, and lively figures. 
Brusque and homely, dashed with a boldness and even 
licentiousness, not unfrequently repulsive, and even 
loathsome, he has vivid flashes of beauty and power, a 
penetrating insight into men and things, and a suprising 
mastery of earnest and homely speech. Indeed Mon- 
taigne is the Hogarth of writers. Alternately he repels 
and attracts his readers. Never dull, never common- 
place, he is always amusing, and often instructive. 

We agree fully with Villemain, who, in his eloquent 
Eloge of Montaigne, endeavors to palliate his faults and 
celebrate his virtues, that the old Gascon humorist was 
" a profound thinker, during the reign of pedantry, an 
ingenious and brilliant author in a language unformed 
and barbarous ;"* nay more, we will allow that Montaigne 
was honest, brave, and even generous in his way. Had 
he been a mere heathen philosopher, he might have been 
respected for his good sense and integrity, and his scep- 
ticism, though mournful enough, might have been for- 
given in consideration of his circumstances. Neither 
would we make him an offender for a word, nor forget 
that in an age of bigotry and outrage he was free from 
intolerance and fanaticism. 

But to all this there are serious drawbacks, and truth 
demands from us, and from every one, an honest ex- 
pression upon this subject. So that with reference 
to Montaigne we must say what Cicero said of far 
greater and better men, Socrates amicus, Plato amicus, 
sed magis arnica Veritas. Truth, then, compels us to 
say, that Montaigne had no fundamental principles, his 

* Melanges Litteraires. 



58 SKETCH OF MONTAIGNE, 

virtue was selfishness, at the best prudence — his religion 
a joke— his philosophy fatalism — his life one long and 
weary dream — and his works the exact mirror and 
apology of his life. A greater egotist never lived — a 
man of genius, with an appearance of solid principle and 
substantial comfort, yet frivolous and vain, absurd and 
aimless, from beginning to end. A shrewd observer, 
an admirable anatomist of his own mind, a natural and 
vigorous writer, he lived and died — must we say it ? — 
" without God and without hope in the world." But he 
was good-natured in his way, honest withal, hospitable 
to his friends and visitors, a good landlord, an easy neigh- 
bor, a fair husband, loved his wine, paid his debts, and 
died in the Catholic faith. So far so good ; for such 
things are not to be despised in men that might have 
been worse. But all the good in Montaigne was due to 
his constitution and habits of early training, his spirit 
of forethought and contrivance, which he had in com- 
mon with beavers and bees, and especially to his extreme 
and Epicurean anxiety to be free from regret and care. 
Not a particle of it is due to faith or to love, to the spirit 
of religion or the spirit of virtue. God was often on his 
lips, as in his writings, but not in his thoughts, above 
all, not in his affections. Of faith, of prayer, of charity, 
of " holy living" and " holy dying," he knew nothing. 
He doubted of all things, of man, of God, of heaven, of 
hell, of the soul, and of immortality, of religion, of phi- 
losophy, of vice, and of virtue. All he claimed to know 
certainly was, that there was such a man as Montaigne, 
and that Montaigne should take good care of himself; 
that is, live as easy and die as easy as he could. Na- 
ture is his God, if God he can be said to have But 
Nature and Montaigne are one ! He lived, therefore, 



SKETCH OF MONTAIGNE. 59 

according to Nature, that is, according to Montaigne. 
He happened to be of an easy, firm, half-Epicurean, 
half- Stoic turn of mind, shrewd in his calculations and 
careful in his business ; he took good care of his health 
and of his money, and so he succeeded in passing through 
life without any great vices or great virtues, with tol- 
erable comfort to himself and some satisfaction to his 
neighbors. Had he been a positively bad man, like 
many of his admirers and followers, his notions, such as 
they were, would have aggravated his temperament, 
and furnished a plausible apology for his vice. By 
means of such principles any " honest rogue" might 
make out a very good case in his own behalf. 

Born in the early part of the sixteenth century, 
(1533,) at the chateau of the same name in Perigord, 
Montaigne was educated with great freedom and care, 
being awakened in the morning by the sound of musical 
instruments, taught to speak and to read the Latin 
tongue, even when a child, and encouraged to spend 
much time in bodily exercises and out-door sports. 
Left very much to the freedom of his own will, he was 
subjected to little control, and incited to noble and vir- 
tuous action only by the counsel and encouragement 
of his parents. His father was of English descent, 
though a citizen of France, who had distinguished him- 
self as a soldier, and was chosen mayor of Bordeaux. 
Proud of himself, of his castle, and of his reputation, 
and equally proud of his little son, whom he regarded 
as a sort of prodigy, he inspired the latter with a fair 
proportion of the family pride and the family virtue. 
At the age of thirteen, he had finished his studies 
— so say his biograprers- — at the college of Bordeaux, 
where, among others, he enjoyed the instructions of the 



60 vinet's miscellanies. 

celebrated Protestant, George Buchanan, at that time 
an exile from his native land. He was destined for a 
judicial station, and was some time a parliamentary 
counsellor ; but aversion to the duties of his office 
caused him to retire from it. Subsequent to the death 
of his father, he was elected mayor of the city of Bor- 
deaux, the duties of which he discharged to the satisfac- 
tion of the citizens. Attached by early ties to the Catholic 
faith, which he probably despised in his heart, but held 
as a reserve against danger ; averse also to everything 
like care and self-denial, possessing an ample estate, 
disposed to give full scope to all his tastes, and indul- 
ging in a boundless freedom of inquiry, he abandoned 
public life for more homely and congenial pursuits. 
He travelled much in foreign lands, and received great 
attentions in Rome and Paris. But he best loved his 
home, and as he grew old, devoted himself chiefly to 
the study and description of himself. He lays the 
whole open, at least claims to do so, though probably 
little suspecting the depths of vanity and folly which 
lay beyond his gaze in the secret depths of the soul. 
He parades his faults, makes a merit of his selfishness, 
vanity, and indolence. "I study myself," he says, 
"more than any other subject. This is my metaphysic, 
this my natural philosophy;" — he might have added, 
" this my virtue, this my religion." He quotes abun- 
dantly from the old pagan philosophers, and occasion- 
ally from other authors, sacred or profane, now yield- 
ing to this, and now to that by turns, at one time appa- 
rently accepting, at another rejecting the whole, and 
of course, falling into all sorts of strange notions and 
extravagances. " The writings of the best authors 
among the ancients," he tells us, " being full and solid, 



SKETCH OF MONTAIGNE. 61 

tempt and carry me which way almost they will. He 
that I am reading seems always to have the most force ; 
and I find that every one in turn has reason, though 
they contradict one another." He details all sorts of 
trifles and gossiping stories, indulges in the grossest 
license of description, falls foul of all opinions, sacred 
and profane, hunts up all singular, outlandish, and even 
indecent sayings, all monstrous fancies and follies, and 
while aiming to promote virtue, sweeps away the foun- 
dations of reason and religion. He is no Atheist, in 
his own view, far from it ; he is not even an Infidel 
and a heretic : he seems even religious at times, and 
strives with all his might, so he seems to think, to pro- 
mote the integrity and happiness of his fellow-men. In 
defending the work of the Spanish Raymond de Se- 
bonde, half philosopher and half monk, who professed 
to vindicate the Christian religion, by demolishing all 
reason and common sense, Montaigne becomes almost 
devout, and one would think, for a few pages, that he 
was one of the best Christians imaginable ; but reading 
on, he finds him extinguishing the last hope of the 
world, by complimenting it out of the realms of reason, 
and proving men to be no better or higher, either in 
body, soul, or state, than parrots or monkeys. On one 
page he seems to glorify virtue, on another vice ; not, 
indeed, vice in the abstract, or vice as he understood 
it, that is, vice in its absolute and grosser forms, but 
what common sense and the word of God plainly de- 
nounce as vice. Now he exalts faith to heaven, and 
anon tramples it under the foot of doubt. On this page 
reason is everything, on the next nothing. Here sobri- 
ety, chastity, and self-denial are extolled as virtues ; there 
drunkenness, sensuality, and self-indulgence receive an 



62 VINET S MISCELLANIES. 

ample and enthusiastic apology ! Indeed, if the arch- 
demon himself had written a book, not a bold, vicious 
book, which every one would throw away with con- 
tempt, but a fair, honest, brave sort of a book, which 
gentlemen and even ladies would read with a relish, he 
could not have taken a more effectual means than 
Montaigne has unwittingly done, to break down the 
barriers of religion and virtue. The extreme popularity 
of Montaigne's Essays among all circles in France, 
may account in part for the spirit of levity, licentious- 
ness, and doubt which seems inseparable from that 
people. Seventy-five editions of the book have been 
published in Europe, but the greater part in France, 
and have been circulated especially " among courtiers, 
soldiers, princes, and men of wit and generosity." 

The spirit of his great motto, Que scais-je ? What 
know I? which he wrote under his name, while over it 
he drew a pair of emblematic scales, runs through his 
book, and pervades his whole life. That he was an 
original and vigorous thinker, and has said some admi- 
rable things which deserve the attention of thinkers, no 
one can doubt ; but he is never profound, never con- 
sistent, and though true, strikingly true in parts, he is 
false, absolutely false as a whole. " The radical fault 
of his understanding," says Dugald Stewart, '-consisted 
in an incapacity of forming, on disputable points, those 
decided and fixed opinions, which can alone impart 
either force or consistency to intellectual character." 
In a word he was a sceptic, not, however, a sceptic 
who merely considers and examines before he believes 
or teaches, not such a sceptic as the lofty and ethereal 
Pascal, who, while he doubts of man, believes in God, 
and finds there the highest union of reason and faith, 



SKETCH OF MONTAIGNE. 63 

but a simple and incorrigible doubter, a doubter from 
the beginning to the end of life, with some prudential 
maxims, but no fixed and immutable principles, no 
clear and well-grounded hopes. He is not positively 
an infidel, at least not consciously so, but a sceptic such 
as we find described in a work of the age to which 
Montaigne belonged, and drawn doubtless from life, by 
Bishop Earle, entitled " Microcosmography, or a Piece 
of the World Discovered in Essays and Characters." 
Indeed, if the picture had been presented to Montaigne, 
as has been shrewdly conjectured, he must himself have 
acknowledged the likeness. "A Skeptick in religion 
is one that hangs in the balance with all sorts of opin- 
ions ; whereof not none but stirs him, and none sways 
him. A man guiltier of credulity than he is taken to 
be ; for it is out of his belief of everything that he be- 
lieves nothing. Each religion scares him from its 
contrary, none persuades him to itself. He would be 
wholly a Christian, but that he is something of an 
Atheist ; and wholly an Atheist, but that he is partly a 
Christian ; and a perfect Heretick, but that there are 
so many to distract him. He finds reason in all opin- 
ions, truth in none ; indeed the least reason perplexes 
him, and the best will not satisfy him. He finds doubts 
and scruples better than resolves them, and is always 
too hard for himself."* 

Some call this " a position of equilibrium," highly 
philosophical and becoming; and under the plausible 
conceit, justify all the errors and aberrations of Mon- 
taigne. But, alas ! what sight can be more painful and 
humiliating, than that of an old man like Montaigne, 

* Quoted in Stewart's Preliminary Dissertations on the History of 
Speculative Philosophy, p. 124. 



■■Mi 



64 VINET S MISCELLANIES. 

thus doubting, on the verge of eternity, poising, as best 
he can, his palsied limbs on the edge of the toppling 
precipice, ready to take the last leap in the dark, or " to 
shoot the gulf," as Emerson calls it, with little hope 
of finding anything beyond, but the deeper abyss of 
eternal extinction? Surely there is something inex- 
pressibly mournful, as well as " farcical" in such a life, 
as Montaigne's American eulogist seems to suspect, and 
no man can justify it by saying, as he does, " Let it lie 
at fate's and nature's door." 

Montaigne tells us that he married a wife, belonging 
to the church, and did many other things equally im- 
portant, not because he chose to do them, but because 
it was " the custom." At the hour of death, he acted 
upon his old principle of habit and of doubt. He died, 
of a painful disease, in 1592, in the sixtieth year of his 
life. He caused the mass to be celebrated in his cham- 
ber. At the elevation of the host, he raised himself 
upon his bed to adore it, " pour V adorer" but imme- 
diately fell back, and expired. 

We have said, and Vinet has said, that Montaigne 
had no God ; that, in fact, he was a materialist, perhaps 
a pantheist and fatalist, though, doubtless, of all the no- 
tions involved in these systems he had his doubts. But 
if he had any theory of the Universe at all, it approach- 
ed the most nearly to fatalism. Hence he says, Essays, 
chap. 12th : " All this I have said," namely, that men 
are in no respects superior, in body or in soul, to the 
lower animals, " to prove this resemblance there is in 
human things, and to bring us back and join us to the 
crowd. We are neither above nor below the rest. 
All that is under heaven (says the wise man) is subject 
to one law and one fortune. 



SKETCH OF MONTAIGNE. 65 

All things remain 
Bound and entangled in one fatal chain. — Lucretius. 

There is some difference ; there are several ranks 
and degrees, but it is under the aspect of one and the 
same nature ; 

All things arising from their proper cause 

Remain distinct and follow nature's laws. — Lucretius" 

And so he goes on to show that all things are fated ; 
that men and animals alike are bound by a resistless 
necessity ; and that, in this respect, man has no pre-emi- 
nence over the beast ; concludes, that it is best it should 
be so, and exhorts himself and others to acquiescence 
and submission. 

Of course, such a man could have no morality, prop- 
erly speaking, and little or no hope beyond death. It 
is singular, however, to see how death haunts him, and 
how much he talks about it. Indeed, his essays are full 
of it. He recurs to the subject again and again ; and 
though he pretends to be reconciled to the thing itself, 
nay, to be on familiar terms with it, having been nearly 
killed on one occasion — an incident which he de- 
scribes with great minuteness, (as if he would penetrate 
the fearful mystery,) and compares it again and again 
to sleeping and fainting— it is quite evident that it is 
the one great evil which he cannot avoid. Stoic and 
Epicurean by turns, he now braces himself up against 
it, as something inevitable, mustering all his resources 
for the dread encounter; and then again, affecting to 
despise it, speaking of it as something absolutely pleas- 
ant, or at least bearable, and using all the means in his 
power to make the encounter, if not agreeable, yet not 
absolutely overwhelming. But of Christian hope or 



66 vinet's miscellanies. 

consolation he makes no mention. He offers no prayer, 
no plea, before the mercy-seat; says nothing of that 
Divine Saviour, who has conquered death, and bereft it 
of its sting, and not a word of that glorious home, where 
all the holy are reunited in eternal bonds. In a word, 
he speaks of the subject as any old Pagan might be sup- 
posed to speak of it, who has never heard of the way of 
life, and who seriously doubts the immortality of the 
soul. 

After stating that he was always prepared for death, 
that is, that in his travels, he always carried about with 
him certain material conveniences which might assist 
him in his last hours, he adds : " To conclude the ac- 
count of my frail humors, I do confess, that in my 
travels, I seldom come to -my quarters, but it runs in 
my mind whether I could like to be sick, and die there. 
I wish to be lodged in some private part of the house, 
remote from all noise and nastiness, not smoky nor 
close. I aim to soothe death by these frivolous circum- 
stances, or rather to rid myself of all other incum- 
brances, that I may have nothing to do but to wait for 
an event which will be enough to weigh me down 
without any other load." He then proceeds to specify 
various forms of death, and the one he would prefer; 
and says, " It is but a moment, 'tis true, but withal a 
moment of such weight, that I would willingly give 
many days of my life to shoot the gulf in my own way. 
# # # Might not one even render it pleasant, as they 
did who were companions in death with Anthony and 
Cleopatra ? I set aside the severe and exemplary efforts 
produced by philosophy and religion. But amongst 
men of low rank, such as a Petronius and a Tigilli- 
nus, at Rome, there have been found men condemned 



SKETCH OF MONTAIGNE. 67 

to dispatch themselves, who have, as it were, lulled 
death to sleep, with the delicacy of their preparations ; 
they have made it slip and steal away, even in the 
height of their accustomed diversions, amongst harlots 
and good fellows. There is not a word of consolation, 
no mention of making a will, no ambitious affectation of 
constancy, no talk of their future state, amongst sports, 
feasts, wit, and mirth, table-talk, music, and amorous 
verses. Is it not possible for us to imitate this resolu- 
tion, in a more decent way ? Since there are deaths fit 
for fools, and fit for wise, let us find out such as are fit 
for those who are betwixt both." Book III., ch. 9. 

In these remarks, we have been insensibly drawn* 
further than we intended ; and yet we are tempted to 
say a few words more ; for Montaigne, in his essential 
characteristics, has recently been reproduced in Ameri- 
ca. Two hundred and sixty years after his death, he 
reappears once more in Ralph Waldo Emerson, who, in 
his general disposition and turn of mind, may be justly 
termed the American Montaigne. His works, with 
slight exceptions pertaining to form and degree, are an 
echo of those of his French prototype, with perhaps a 
louder and sweeter tone, mingled with a peculiar, but 
vigorous New England twang. There are differences 
— perhaps considerable ones ; for Emerson is a more 
thorough and consistent sceptic, who knows himself in 
this respect completely, and makes no pretensions to 
faith in any creed or church, whether Catholic or Protest- 
ant. He has also more depth and refinement, and, unlike 
Montaigne, who is materialistic in his tendencies, Emer- 
son is ideal and imaginative, a worshipper of beauty, 
and what is singular, at first sight, a devout adorer, not 
only of nature, but of himself. Montaigne never rose 



68 vinet's miscellanies. 

to sucn a strain. He had a comfortable opinion of 
himself, but, upon the whole, never fell down to worship 
his own image. Yet both constitute their own God, 
and depend for guidance and blessing exclusively upon 
their personal impulses. Neither have faith, except in 
themselves ; and both give utterance to the heartiest 
contempt of all other faiths. Emerson, it may be said, 
has faith in the infinite, in the over-soul, as he calls it, 
but it is the infinite as it flows and flashes in his own 
native energies and tendencies. The style of Emerson, 
though unlike that of Montaigne in several particulars, 
wonderfully resembles it in others. Indeed, it seems 
the utterance of the same man, somewhat polished, and 
in a higher and more rhythmic strain. It has the same 
honest, homely freedom, the same rapidity and force, 
the same sudden and striking turns, the same quaint 
and racy vigor, the same peculiar and lively ring. 
The quotations are somewhat similar, and made after 
the same fashion — nay, many of the thoughts and 
expressions are precisely alike. Indeed, you see 
Montaigne and Emerson on almost every page — the 
one in the homely garb of the old Gascon gentle 
man, the other in the pomp and splendor of modern 
rhetoric. 

But upon this subject we need not argue or specu- 
late. Emerson has himself confessed, in general terms, 
the family likeness and sympathy. The essays of Mon- 
taigne from early years have been his favorite study ; 
they seem to himself the utterance of his own secret 
heart. In his article on Montaigne, in his " Represent- 
ative Men," he says : " And yet since the personal re- 
gard which I entertain for Montaigne may be unduly 
great, I will, under the shield of this prince of egotists, 



SKETCH OF MONTAIGNE. 69 

offer, as an apology for electing him as the representa- 
tive of scepticism, a word or two to explain how my 
love began and grew for this admirable gossip. A sin- 
gle odd volume of Cotton's translation of the Essays 
remained to me from my father's library, when a boy. 
It lay long neglected until after many years, when I was 
newly escaped from college, I read the book and pro- 
cured the remaining volumes. I remember the delight 
and wonder in which I lived with it. It seemed to me 
as if I had myself written the book in some former life, 
so sincerely it spoke to my thoughts and experience."* 
No wonder, for Emerson is a genius, and does not pray. 
" The dull pray," he says, " the geniuses are light mock- 
ers." Montaigne doubts, doubts everything in its turn. 
So, also, Emerson doubts. " Knowledge," he affirms, 
"is the knowing that we cannot know." " Beliefs," he 
adds, " appear to be structural ; and as soon as each 
man attains the poise and vivacity which allow the 
whole machinery to play, he will not need extreme ex- 
amples, but will alternate all beliefs in his own life." 
He believes, indeed, in " the natural and moral economy," 
in " absolute truth and virtue." Good, very good ! so 
far as it goes ; nothing could be better. In fact, it is 
fundamental ; but w r hat is it ? Is devotion one with 
" the falling leaf and the blowing clover ?" " All 
things," says Emerson, are " identical," the " one and 
the many" — but the one is in the many, and all men 
and animals are on their way to glory ! Sin is " defect," 
sin is only something " less ;" and virtue is acting " ac- 
cording to one's constitution." God is in all, as instinct, 
as intellect, as intuition ; God is the all, and therefore 
all things, good and bad, are fated. Beliefs are " struc- 

* Representative men, p. 163. 



70 VINET S MISCELLANIES. 

tural" a wise man runs through them all, and lands in 
what ? In the absolute, the inevitable, the eternal. 
Believe what he will, nay, believe nothing, " all are at 
last contained in the Eternal Cause." " God is a sub- 
stance, and his method illusion !" And thus, 

" If our bark sink, 'tis only to a deeper sea." 

" Belief," says Emerson, " consists in accepting the af- 
firmations of the soul ; unbelief in denying them. " Pret- 
ty comprehensive this ; but whose soul ? My soul, 
your soul, any soul — what we affirm is the truth, noth- 
ing more, nothing less. Belief then, like virtue, is "con- 
stitutional." I cannot accept your faith, you cannot 
accept mine. We must take what nature gives us. 
Each man must have a revelation of his own ; nay, he 
is his own revelation. There can be no Bible, then, 
from God, no special revelation, no infallible creed. 
Christianity may be great and good, but there is some- 
thing greater and better. In a word, we are (Emerson 
and those who hold with him might say) our own reli- 
gion and our own God. The Infinite speaks in us, lives 
in us, acts in us, whatever we are, and whatever we 
do ! And this infinite is little better than the Chinese 
sage's " vast flowing vigor." Says Emerson, emphat- 
ically, "Fortune, Minerva, Muse, Holy Ghost, — these 
are quaint names, too narrow to cover this unbounded 
substance. The baffled intellect must still kneel before 
this cause which refuses to be named — ineffable cause, 
which every fine genius has essayed to represent by 
some emphatic symbol, as Thales by water, Anaximenes 
by air, Anaxagoras by (nous) thought, Zoroaster by 
fire, Jesus and the moderns by love ; and the metaphor 

* Representative Men, p. 216. 

2* 



SKETCH OF MONTAIGNE. 71 

of each becomes a national religion. The Chinese 
Mencius has not been the least successful in his gener- 
alization. ' I fully understand language,' he said, ' and 
nourish well my vast flowing vigor.' 'I beg to ask 
what you call vast flowing vigor ?' said his companion. 
' The explanation,' replied Mencius, ' is difficult. This 
vigor is supremely great, and in the highest degree un- 
bending. Nourish it correctly, and do it no injury, and 
it will fill up the vacancy between heaven and earth. 
This vigor accords with and assists justice and reason, 
and leaves no hunger.' In our more correct writing 
we give to this generalization the name of Being, and 
therefore confess that we have arrived as far as we 
can go. Suffice it for the joy of the universe, that we 
have not arrived at a wall, but at interminable oceans."* 
Interminable oceans, vast flowing vigor, fire, air, water, 
thought, love, being, a boundless, ineffable, nameless, 
ever-flowing abyss, and we the waves — something grand 
in all this — but where is God, the personal God, the Fa- 
ther of spirits, the God who hears prayer, who forgives 
sin, who regenerates the soul ? 

Said we not well, that Emerson, like Montaigne, has 
no God, in the proper sense of the term ? To him God 
is " the generalization" of the intellect, the ever-present 
" Ideal" — substance, being, unity, " that unity, that over- 
soul, within which every man's particular being is con- 
tained and made one with all other." "We live in 
succession, in division, in parts, in particles. Meantime, 
within man is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; 
the universal beauty, to which every part and particle 
is equally related ; the eternal One.f Perfect and eter- 

* Emerson's Essays, 2 Series, pp. *79, 80. 
| Essays, 1 Series, p. 245. 



72 vinet's miscellanies. 

nal identity here. If God is personal, he is personal 
only in man. He comes to consciousness only in man, 
as Hegel, Emerson's master in metaphysics, teaches. 
Hence our author adds : " And this deep power in which 
we exist, and whose beatitude is all accessible to us, is 
not only self-sufficing and perfect in every hour, but 
the act of seeing and the thing seen, the seer and the 
spectacle, the subject and the object, are one."* Of course 
" before the revelations of the soul, Time, Space, Na- 
ture, sink away." God is only a " common nature," 
"all mind is one," "that third party, that common na- 
ture, is not social; it is impersonal ; is 6»W."f And 
thus, " the simplest person who in his integrity worships 
God, becomes God!".% 

Of course Emerson, in such a case, like Montaigne 
under the influence of materialism or fatalism, can have 
no morality or virtue. It can be nothing more than his 
peculiar temperament, having no basis, no sanction or 
law. " That which I call right or goodness is the choice 
of my constitution ; and that which I call heaven, and 
inwardly aspire after, is the state or circumstance de- 
sirable to my constitution." § 

Sin is unknown to such a system. It is simply " de- 
fect," or something " less," as Emerson frequently con- 
fesses, and will soon be swallowed up in the boundless 
tides of being. There can be no reward, and no pun- 
ishment, no salvation, at least no perdition. All, good 
and bad, whether they worship in churches, or sin in 
brothels, are on their way to glory. On this point, 
startling as it may seem, Emerson does not blench for 
an instant. " Evil," says he, " according to the old phi- 

* Essays, 1 Series p. 245. + Ibid. pp. 249, 252. 

X Ibid. p. 265. § Ibid. p. 125. 



SKETCH OF MONTAIGNE. 73 

losophers, is good in the making. # # # * To 
what a painful perversion had Gothic theology arrived 
that Swedenborg admitted no conversion for evil spirits ! 
But the divine effort is never relaxed ; the carrion in 
the sun will convert itself to grass and flowers ; and 
man, though in brothels or jails, or on gibbets, is on his 
way to all that is good and true."* In a word, good and 
evil, in their essential natures, are indifferent. The bad 
changes into the good. God hates the one no more than 
the other. Like the Indian god whose words Emerson 
quotes with approbation, he may say: " I am the same to 
all mankind. There is not one who is worthy of my love 
or hatred. They who serve me with adoration, — I am 
in them, and they in me. If one whose ways are alto- 
gether evil serve me alone, he is as respectable as the 
just man ; he is altogether well employed ; he soon be- 
cometh pf a virtuous spirit, and obtaineth eternal hap- 
piness, "f 

Finally, in such a system, there can be no devotion, 
no piety, no prayer. " Men's prayers," says Emerson, 
" are a disease of the will." " Prayer for a private end, 
is meanness and theft." " As soon as a man is one with 
God, he will not beg," — pray. J 

Nor will he repent. " Another kind of false prayers 
are our regrets." And why should a man repent, who 
is one with God, who is God ? He may change for the 
better ; but he has nothing to regret, nothing to fear. 
Demons and wicked men need only " self-reliance," to 
become as the angels of light. They, too, have nothing 
to regret, nothing to fear. For " the same fire, vital, 
consecrating, celestial, burns until it shall dissolve all 

* Representative Men, p. 138. f Ibid. p. 139. 

% Essays, 1 Series, pp. 68 69, 



74 vinet's miscellanies. 

things into the waves and surges of an ocean of 
light/'* 

Emerson has a fine essay on Prudence, and doubtless, 
like his friend Montaigne, he is in most things a prudent 
man. He seems to possess a free, joyous spirit — judg- 
ing simply from his works ; but alas ! these are proba- 
bly but a poor expression of the man. He seems to 
have no fear of death, and exults in the prospect of fall- 
ing back into the boundless ocean of being ! He claps 
his hands, and shouts with infantine glee, in the pres- 
ence of the vast, ever-flowing over-soul. To him the 
past is nothing, the future nothing, the present "always 
present," and always joyful, everything! He seems 
content to live, content to die. But all this may be 
surface, at the best, poetry, or philosophic cant, and be- 
neath these joyous waves of the upper spirit, there may 
be, even in Emerson's soul terrible chasms of doubt and 
fear, opening into unutterable and appalling depths be- 
low. Be this however as it may, nay, granting that he 
has good health, and a happy constitution, the gift 
of genius, and the gift of joy, his system of religion 
and morals is utterly baseless and barren ; and such 
a man is just as likely to act "from the devil," as from 
God ; from vice as from virtue. " I remember," says 
he, " an answer which, when quite young, I was 
prompted to make to a valued adviser, who was wont 
to importune me with the dear old doctrines of the 
church. On my saying, 'What have I to do with the 
sacredness of traditions, if I live wholly from within ?' 
my friend suggested, — 'But these impulses may be 
from below, not from above !' I replied, ' They do not 
seem to me to be such; but if I am the devil's child, I 

* Essays, 1 Series, p. 259, 



SKETCH OF MONTAIGNE. 75 

will then live from the devil.' No law can be sacred to 
me, but that of my own nature. Good and bad are 
but names very readily transferable to that or this ; the 
only right is what is after my constitution, the only 
wrong what is against it." # 

Ah me, how true it is, as recorded by the pen of in- 
spiration, " that there is a way which seemeth right unto 
a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death." For 
here is a theory, vaunted as the very perfection of 
beauty and power, without a God, without a Saviour, 
without a morality, without a heaven, — a theory, which 
makes man his own God, his own law, his own morality, 
his own heaven, — a theory, the final result of which 
must be universal atheism, or at the best universal doubt. 
It is, however, the natural, the inevitable result of aban- 
doning an authoritative revelation, and above all of re- 
jecting that great central truth, the incarnation of Je- 
hovah in the person of Jesus Christ, where alone we 
find the personal God, the Father, the friend, the Sav- 
iour of man. 

* Essays, 1 Series, p. 44. 



MAN CREATED FOR GOD. 

(FROM " LA MANIFESTATION DES CONVICTIONS RELIGIEUSES.") 



Man cannot be his own end, nor that of any other 
creature in the universe. All things have been created 
for one another, according to the law of a progression, 
of which man is the last term. If he would seek a 
higher relation, he must seek it in God. To seek it in 
himself would be to make himself his own God ; to 
seek it in anything beneath God is impossible. No in- 
termediate beings can stand in such a relation to him, 
for their nature is analogous to his own, and their most 
excellent faculties exist in vain if they have not God 
for their object. We do not mean, by this assertion, 
to deny all immediate relation of the universe to God. 
Nevertheless, the direct relation of the Father of spirits 
is with spirits ; matter exists only as the form, the ob- 
ject or instrument of mind ; mind is first, and matter 
can be conceived of only in reference to mind ; mind, 
then, in the light of the material universe, has an abso- 
lute existence : everything exists for it, and it exists for 
God ; and man, the only spiritual being, the only per- 
sonal agent on the earth, in the midst of the immense 
diversity of things animate and inanimate, man is the 
spirit, as it were, of this vast body ; he completes in 



MAN CREATED FOR GOD. 77 

himself all its beings and relations, all converge to him 
and through him towards their great first Cause. 

Either we are our own end, and this is the hypothesis 
of Atheism ; or our existence is without an end, which 
is contrary to reason ; or finally, God is our end. We 
exist for him ; but what does this imply ? Must this 
remain in the region of abstract ideas, and never be- 
come an embodied fact ? Ought it not to be realized ; 
but how should such an idea be realized, in view of the 
enormous disproportion and distance there is between 
us and God ? In this aspect of the matter, the whole 
universe, comprising the aggregate of immaterial beings,, 
would be an absurdity, since, between the most excellent 
of them and their Creator, the disproportion is infinite. 
But neither this nor any other circumstance can efface 
the law written on our nature by the divine hand. 
Every being gravitates to its principle, every created 
spirit gravitates towards the uncreated Spirit. Every 
principle tends to realize itself in facts ; and conse- 
quently the created spirit must regulate its life by the 
uncreated Spirit. If we say these natural tendencies 
fall short of their object, we must believe that they are 
not natural ; and to be satisfied that this effort at sub- 
mission and dependence is only a leap in the dark, a 
mere phantom, a solemn mockery, or at the best a mere 
gratification of our internal logic, we must understand 
better than we do now the relations of the Creator with 
the creation ; we must be able to prove that there is 
no fundamental force in these demonstrations of the 
spiritual creature ; that their presence or their absence 
reckons for nothing in the system of the universe, and 
that, being simple modifications of our internal exist- 
ence, conduce nothing to the existence or maintenance 



78 vinet's miscellanies. 

of order. Reasoning thus, all the facts and phenomena 
of moral order must be regarded as mere appearances, 
and the entire combination of facts as a phantasmago- 
ria ; so that what is real for our senses would alone be 
real to God. 

Such an inference, in our opinion, would be anything 
but bold ; it would be timid and base. Sapere aude. 
Dare to infer from the spiritual nature of man his des- 
tiny and his duty ; and when told of the glory of God 
as the end of your existence, recoil not at the ex- 
pression, knowing well that any other by which you 
might replace it, would be no more intelligible or less 
figurative ; and that, in fact, were there nothing real 
but that which could be named, we must deny to our- 
selves the highest, the most essential realities. Nothing 
can be more just or more rational in the view of man 
than this expression, the glory of God. Yes : if God 
be God, if man be man, the glory of God is the great 
end of man. Man is created to render glory to God ; 
his speech, his life, his thought unite to glorify God ; 
all that he does in another spirit is labor lost, movement 
without progress, and an utter waste of life. 

Trembling I approach this vast abyss. To speak of 
what God is, of the mode of his existence, as if such 
existence could have a mode, is little less than profana- 
tion. Let me put my hand upon my month, and pros- 
trate myself in the dust, O my God, when I speak of 
thee ! Have respect to my desire ; for I wish to glorify 
thee. Permit me to name thee, and keep me from 
naming thee in vain. Deign to watch over my words, 
and let none escape my lips but such as honor thee. 

" Thou art sufficient to thyself, O thou who compre- 
hendest all within thyself! Thy glory comes not from 



MAN CREATED FOR GOD. 79 

without ; for there is nothing without thee : thy glory 
is not, like ours, derived from the opinion of others ; 
for to constitute our glory, such opinion must be of 
value in our eyes, and its influence acknowledged by 
us ; but what opinion can have value or influence in 
thy sight, Thou, who art the source of truth, and from 
whom proceeds all that is true in us ! The contempla- 
tion of thyself suffices thee ; thy glory springs from 
thine own nature. Immutable as thy being, it can 
neither be diminished nor augmented. For thy glory 
is in what thou art, in thy power ever infinite, in thy 
wisdom ever perfect, in thy goodness ever entire. Let 
the beings whom thou hast created attempt to will what 
thou hast not willed, and they but ruin themselves, 
without ever tarnishing thy glory or thy felicity. By 
refusing to glorify thee, they but refuse thee thine own, 
that which was not theirs either to give or to withhold 
from thee. Yet they have dared to refuse what was 
their duty to yield ; though to have promoted thy glory 
would have brought honor upon themselves, and secured 
their true happiness. Their homage, nothing to thee, 
everything to them, is at once their highest interest, 
their most solemn obligation. Mirror of the eternal 
sun, they add nothing to thy splendor, for their radi- 
ance is only thine ; yet they are not the less bound to 
reflect its light, and thus by multiplying its rays, to re- 
produce in each of their souls, its entire image ! 

Hadst thou restricted the race to a single individual, 
his works alone would have praised thee ; his mute of- 
fering would have been understood and accepted by 
thee ; but in the multiplication of the race thou hast laid 
upon man a new obligation, or rather thou hast added 
to this obligation a new form of expression. The indi- 



80 vixet's miscellanies. 

vidual man would never have felt the necessity of 
praising thee by his works, if when placed in society 
among his fellows he felt no necessity of praising thee 
with his lips. In this thou imposest upon him no new 
duty ; if he fulfil it not with alacrity it is evidence that 
he would never have obeyed thee. The sight of the 
first individual of his species should have drawn from 
him all the homage which before had been confined to 
his own breast. If thy glory were dear to him he could 
not but seek to reflect and multiply its beams ; above 
all if he felt that thou hadst revealed thyself to him. if 
he possessed religious convictions (for it is impossible, 
O God, that thou shouldst not appear more and more 
adorable in proportion as thou revealest thyself), he 
would have felt himself constrained for thy glory to de- 
clare all he knew of thee ; the dimmest discovery of thy- 
self suffices for thy glory, and if thou deignest to speak 
to man, it cannot be in vain, it cannot but add much to 
the eternal reasons which he has to praise and bless 
thee. The fact that thou hast condescended to hold 
converse with him, this single fact above all else speaks 
volumes to man, and discovers to him with what love 
thou regardest him, and of what estimation he is in thine 
eyes !" 

This, it appears to us, is what conscience and nature 
alike impel us to say to God, and with such force, that 
if amongst human religions, there be upon the earth 
one religion from God, it ought to abound and super- 
abound in the acknowledgment of the duty we are 
enforcing. The glory of God ought to be the principle 
and end of all precepts, the source and motive of all ac- 
tions, the grace and dignity of all words. Such a reli- 
gion ought to bring our whole nature into the service of 



MAN CREATED FOR GOD. 81 

the glory of God, and should address us thus : " Ye are 
not your own" — " Glorify God in your bodies and in your 
spirits which are his." Such a religion ought to make the 
fulfilment of this duty the great end of our life, and say 
to us, " Ye have been called to show forth the praises of 
him who hath called you out of darkness into his mar- 
vellous light." Such a religion ought to make the glory 
of God the motive of all the good we do, and to recog- 
nize as good nothing but what springs from such a 
source ; then will it say to us, "■ Let your light so shine 
before men, that they may see your good works, and 
glorify your Father who is in heaven." Such a religion 
demands that the glory of God should enter into the 
minutest details of our existence, and make everything 
conducive to it. " Whether ye eat or drink, or what- 
soever ye do, do all to the glory of God." Such a re- 
ligion requires from us the most frank and explicit con- 
fession of our faith; it will expressly attach to such 
confession the blessing of heaven ; and although it does 
not assure an entrance into the kingdom of heaven to 
all who cry " Lord ! Lord !" it will admit of nothing in 
exchange or expiation for an ungrateful silence, and will 
declare without reserve, that whosoever on earth shall 
have denied his Master, shall be denied by him in the 
presence of the angels. Finally, such a religion will re- 
pudiate all dissimulation of doctrines, will honor heroic 
testimony, will bless the martyr, and of all religions, 
alone will transform its disciples and preachers, and es- 
tablish in its bosom an universal priesthood. 



THE IDEA OF THE INFINITE, 

(FROM " LA MANIFESTATION DES CONVICTIONS RELIGIEUSES.") 



Although the pursuit of wealth and glory, the wor- 
ship of reason and of the arts, or some social passion 
seem to absorb the minds of men and satisfy the cra- 
vings of the soul — the idea of the Infinite, being that by 
which all the ideas of the finite are explained and made 
legitimate — the idea of the Infinite, apart from which 
and without which man can account for nothing, and for 
which, therefore, he seeks in every direction — this idea 
is constantly lurking in the heart of the community, 
taking there the name of God or of the gods, and thus 
creating or preserving religion. Willing or unwilling, 
man is constrained to concern himself with this great 
subject ; the most indifferent yield to it in silence ; 
laws provide for its maintenance ; the commonwealth 
incorporates itself with it ; in a word, the whole consti- 
tution of human affairs is organized around the idea of 
God. All the great movements of public life sanction 
this idea. All great questions, spontaneously or of ne- 
cessity, are founded upon it. And in proportion as 
grave circumstances elicit momentous problems, the so- 
lutions sought insensibly lead the minds of men to the 
source whence all social errors or all social truths neces- 



THE IDEA OF THE INFINITE. 83 

sarily spring. That which obviously lies at the basis 
of the life of the community would appear also the fit- 
ting basis of the life of each individual. Not every day, 
but once for all, this idea would seem to demand of ev- 
ery one an account of his belief, in order that it may be 
known what he really is ; until this is done he is a living 
enigma, a nameless being, at the moment he names him- 
self, and society imagines that it knows him. If we 
take at hazard any period of history, this phenomenon 
will be less striking, but if we take the entire annals of 
man, we shall see that the first desire of the human 
breast, a desire which nothing can divert or destroy, is 
to be enlightened on this subject, both with reference to 
ourselves and others. The entire life of man is mirrored 
in religion, the whole of religion in human life ; the his- 
tory of humanity is the history of its creeds ; the his- 
tory of his creeds is the history of man himself. If we 
take a retrospect of by-gone ages, we shall find that all 
the great changes in the condition of man were coeval 
with, or the result of, some great revolution in religious 
opinion. 

Who, after all this, would not conclude that the cause 
we are pleading is gained in every mind ? But we 
must not take for free consent the universal dominion 
of a logical necessity. To how many laws does human 
nature submit without loving them ? Especially is this 
the case with reference to the supremacy of an abstract 
truth. Long before its claims are acknowledged, it has 
penetrated into the conscience, and we shall hear its 
voice, slowly, perhaps, but sure of eventual triumph, 
reclaiming the world to its obedience. The world will 
complain, but the world will submit. Thus vanishes 
the apparent contradiction. Man does not willingly 



84 vinet's miscellanies. 

impart to his fellow-man the secrets of his conscience, 
so long, at least, as nothing in himself but conscience 
demands the disclosure. Take the mass of mankind : 
it is not true of them that common consent never per- 
mits a curtain to be drawn before that interior stage on 
which an endless drama is enacted between conscience 
and passion. But if resistance here prove available to 
the individual, the law, however slight its influence upon 
each person, and at any given moment, has its effect 
upon the whole ; it rules society, and keeps the world 
in aw T e. It compels us to consider the infinite ; forces 
us to introduce the idea, if not into each act of public 
and private life, into the very heart of those institutions 
which regulate the affairs of man. 

Away, and forever with the miserable comments of 
materialism. We leave its recent disciples to treat the 
infinite as a political invention ; they not perceiving 
that this very invention presupposes a necessity of hu- 
man nature, and that this necessity is a logical one. 
Under the pretence of inventing such an idea, what do 
they but copy nature, and yield the human spirit to its 
tendencies, to nature and to truth ? What indeed is the 
finite, if the infinite does not exist ? What is the rela- 
tive, without the absolute ? Where is reason, where is 
certainty upon any subject, where is good sense, with- 
out this fundamental idea ? Who then will compre- 
hend matter without spirit, who explain the material 
infinite without the spiritual infinite ? That such 
ideas should ever have been treated as paradoxical is 
one of the most striking proofs of the fall, for they are 
the first postulate of every thought, the first reason of 
our reason. We are more certain of spirit, than of 
matter, of the infinite than the finite. This instinct- 



THE IDEA OF THE INFINITE. 85 

ive conviction, enfeebled it may be in some of the 
members of the human family, and in some ap- 
parently destroyed, this intuition of the divine as the 
explanation of the human, is found in the mass of hu- 
manity ; this great truth is discovered there, just as the 
waters of a lake present to view that fine tint of azure 
which cannot be seen in any of the drops of the liquid 
mass. 

Let us interrogate this humanity, in which man, in- 
complete, and fragmentary in each individual, again finds 
himself complete, at least with reference to all the at- 
tributes left to him by the fall. Its replies will have 
this double effect : they will alike teach us what in the 
eyes of humanity entire, the religious question really is ; 
and what in a matter of such moment, is the necessity 
and importance of a free profession. The transition 
from the one idea to the other, is inevitable. 

Looking only on the surface of human affairs, one 
would not say, that the question of religion, in a fixed 
or positive form, is everywhere present, or that the 
whole of life is its embodiment ; but upon closer ex- 
amination we shall find that the vulgar empiricism 
which seems to be the only philosophy of the masses 
envelops another philosophy. Again, we must not 
stop at the individual, but view man in his generic 
character ; then we shall acknowledge that he is not so 
destitute of principles as not to feel the need of them, 
and that all his opinions, all his life, are referable to 
some primary ideas. Although all his wants and pas- 
sions do not render a theory of the universe neces- 
sary to him, nevertheless he has formed one ; this has 
been, we venture to say, one of his first cares ; indeed, 
he has seemed incapable of arranging his own life, be- 



86 vinet's miscellanies. 

fore having arranged a system of the universe.* That 
he may have first shaped out his own course, and the 
universe afterwards, is possible; but it would not be the 
less true that he has aimed to conform his conduct to the 
idea he has conceived of the universe, or things as a 
whole, an aggregate in which God himself is included, 
if, indeed, God himself be not the centre, the meaning, 
and so to speak, the essence of the whole. If man, in- 
deed, has wandered in the search from the true path, 
and his route has sometimes deviated into the errors of 
pantheism or polytheism, — one fact remains not less 
certain, namely that his life, separated from the princi- 
ple of all life, the finite detached from the infinite ap- 
pears to his reason a supreme absurdity, and any solu- 
tion of the problem seems to him preferable to the 
abandonment of all to chance. In the sphere of obli- 
gation and of moral responsibility reigns the same 
logical necessity. To whom are we under obligation — 
to whom are we responsible ? For an answer to this 
question we cannot look too high. It can belong only to 
individual philosophies, or rather to those of the schools, 
to attach the moral life of man to anything less vast 
than the infinite, less great than God, or to some un- 
known impersonal infinity. In this last attempt at so- 
lution, the dominant law of our nature is still apparent, 
which is evermore the craving for the infinite. But, 
while a few subtile spirits cut their own particular path- 
way, the majority of mankind better inspired, turns it- 
self openly towards the personal infinity, towards God, 

* That is, some fundamental principles to account for his own exist- 
ence, and that of the universe around him. Some ideas of cause, of 
supremacy, of obligation, in a word of the infinite, and his relations to 
it, lurk in his mind. — T. 



THE IDEA OF THE INFINITE. 87 

in whom alone they find the end, the rule, and the sanc- 
tion of duty. 

The prejudices of sense and the distractions of life 
alone conceal from us this imperative necessity, at once 
rational and moral. Let any cause, for example, a pow- 
erful abstraction, suddenly isolate us from the external 
world, and place us, for a moment, face to face with 
ourselves, by that very act it will place us face to face 
with the infinite, with which our existence feels its con- 
nection, as soon as inferior relations cease to be felt. 
In such moments of recollection and self-communion 
we feel that our true and fundamental relation is with 
the infinite, that the roots of our being are imbedded 
there, and that thence our existence derives its mean- 
ing. Then we feel that God is the idea of ideas, the 
truth of truths ; that he not only envelops our whole 
existence, but penetrates its inmost recesses ; that the 
thought of Him claims like Himself, the right of omni- 
presence, and ought to be mingled with all the elements 
and with all the successive movements in our life ; — 
that that life to answer its end ought not only once for 
all, but during each instant, to receive God entire ; that 
He should determine and regulate every pulsation ; in 
a word, that the loftiest of all ideas is also the closest to 
us, that the sublime and the necessary are one, and that 
God is the life of the soul. 

Whatever else man may do, and whatever pretend, 
he can act in no way in which his life shall not be the 
index and rule of his knowledge or ignorance of eternal 
things. Visibly or invisibly, either in a negative or 
positive way, all his life has reference to this. Of ne- 
cessity he has some principles. On the supposition that 
God is or is not, or simply that God may be, such or 



88 vinet's miscellanies. 

such will be the man. The creed determines the char- 
acter. Every one must acknowledge that the solutions 
of these primary questions draw after them in the life 
the gravest consequences ; that everything hangs upon 
this point, that our whole being is modified and deter- 
mined by it ; and that in a general but profound sense, 
to know what we believe, is to know what we are. 



THE ENDLESS STUDY. 



PART I. 

Mathematical science admits the supposition of two 
lines which are ever approaching but never meet. If 
it is not in our power, even with the most delicate in- 
struments, to realize this supposition in the visible world, 
may we not have the mournful advantage of finding it 
in our moral existence ? St. Paul informs us that there 
are those who are ever learning but never come to 
the knowledge of the truth.* This statement, which in 
the passage referred to is applied only to certain females, 
" laden with sins, led away by divers lusts," is not, be 
assured, true only of one of the sexes. Among both a 
multitude of persons are evidences of its truth, a thing 
strange at first sight, natural when we examine it more 
narrowly, and investigate the terms which the apostle 
has used. 

The truth of which he speaks in this place includes at 
once what we are, and what God is ; in the one case 
the knowledge of our nature, of our moral condition, of 
our situation in life ; in the other, the work which the 

* 2 Tim. iii. *7. " Ever learning, but never able to come to the knowl- 
edge of the truth." 



90 vinet's miscellanies. 

grace of God has accomplished for our salvation. The 
truth which St. Paul has in view does not exist as truth 
but in the union of these two parts. He who has the 
first without the second, knows not the truth ; nay, he 
who has the second, but only in the intellect, knows it 
no more than the other. There are, then, two ways of 
coming short of the truth : either by advancing one 
half of the road and then stopping, or by advancing into 
the other half, but only under the guidance of intellect. 
In either case, we are to be accounted among the per- 
sons of whom the apostle says, " they are always learn- 
ing but never come to the knowledge of the truth." 
They are ever learning, because each of these parts of 
the truth is so vast, that we may call it inexhaustible. 
They never come to the knowledge of the truth, because 
the truth depends upon two conditions, the first of which 
is wanting to the one class, the second to the other ; 
the first completing the one half of the truth by its union 
with the other, the second seizing the truth, not by the 
intellect alone, but by the heart, by the whole man. 
This distinction divides into two classes the heirs of the 
same calamity, or the partakers of the same guilt. It 
is to these two classes, or these two states, to which 
we would successively call attention. 

But let us linger a moment on this side of our sub- 
ject, and glance at another class of men ; those, namely 
who do not in any way know any portion of the truth ; 
those who, so far from always learning, never learn at 
all. How is it possible that a man should never learn 
anything of man, a living being know nothing of life, 
a Christian (by name) know nothing of God ? By shut- 
ting against the light all the windows of the soul, by 
placing at each of its gates a vigilant and sleepless sen- 



THE ENDLESS STUDY. 91 

tinel, under the name of business, of pleasure, or of duty ; 
by not permitting itself to form a single void in its world- 
ly engagements, by living, perhaps under an aspect of 
seriousness, in giddiness and delirium ; by rendering it- 
self insane through a cold and systematic madness ; by 
making of life an eternity, of the flesh a God, of pleasure 
a religion. Indeed this state of things is sometimes at- 
tained even with less difficulty. If, in certain cases, 
there is some system in this ignorance, because a con- 
fused instinct has warned the soul, and, in advance, 
made it afraid of the truth, it not unfrequently happens 
that a wretched education has made ignorance the nat- 
ural atmosphere of the soul, the unchangeable dwelling 
of the spirit. Prejudices imbibed from infancy and in- 
cessantly fortified by example, acquire the life and en- 
ergy of an instinct, by which profounder and truer 
instincts are stifled before their birth, like a fire before 
it bursts into flame. Persons of this description live an 
earthly life without even suspecting that there is an- 
other. They conceive of no higher interests than those 
of time, scarcely find opportunity to notice them ; pro- 
foundly asleep, they neither hear the murmurs of con- 
science nor the mockeries of Satan, who does not hes- 
itate to insult his victims. Their soul is dead, or they 
would sometimes encounter those higher instincts with 
which God has fortified our nature : they live only in 
their sensations, or in the thousand objects which excite 
them, in their appetites and passions, their earthly hopes 
and fears. But they do not always live thus, as one 
might suppose, with violent agitations of passion, but 
with an air of reason and sobriety, with an order and 
decorum which give them, in the estimation of the 
world, the name of sober and solid men, and thus re- 



92 vinet's miscellanies. 

move from their own minds all idea of disorder, and 
inspire them, if need be, with confidence in themselves. 
Thus are they utterly deceived in regard to those things 
of which God only, and those who have the secret of 
God, can discover the disorder and folly. For beneath 
this surface, so calm to our eyes, there is a license of 
evil, a madness of passion, a revel, so to speak, of all the 
elements of sin which our nature conceals ; as in a 
house carefully shut and abandoned, in appearance, to 
the repose of the night, a thousand excesses and disorders 
are indulged, the noise of which is stifled and the scan- 
dal hidden by the thickness of the walls. Thus glide 
through years and drop into eternity a crowd of lives 
which, from all that appears, have not, upon that rapid 
descent, had a single moment to pause and reflect. God 
only knows, the great day will declare it, how many 
times the light was presented to their souls, how many 
warnings rang in their ears, and how often, had they 
not hastened to extinguish this light and suppress 
these voices, they might have emerged from their illu- 
sion and struck into the way of truth. 

This last observation recalls us to our subject. 
These warnings, multiplied during the life of many 
persons, and in circumstances the most favorable, often 
make themselves heard. Indeed it is surprising they 
do not always make themselves heard. Even in the 
most ordinary lives, it would seem that everything is 
adapted to raise, by little and little, the bandage from 
our eyes. It would seem that all the illusions with 
which we enter life need not prevent our coming into 
contact with the truth. Indeed such a thing often oc- 
curs to many. This revelation or disenchantment is not 
the privilege only of old age. The mournful light 



THE ENDLESS STUDY. 93 

sometimes breaks upon young eyes. There are times 
when every one lives more rapidly than usual, when 
the old age of the soul arrives in the season of hope, 
like a premature winter on verdure and flowers. Suc- 
cessively one learns to estimate the world, life, and 
finally himself. True, it does not belong to man, upon 
these different points, to teach himself the pure truth, 
the whole truth. That result, coming later, belongs 
not to us ; and the knowledge of the remedy alone can 
give us the full knowledge of the evil. Nevertheless, 
it is true that previous to that revelation, we can, by 
natural means, learn much of the world, of life, and of 
ourselves. That such information, on account of the 
sources from which it is derived, may not be perfectly 
exact and pure I admit ; that in detail, many illusions 
may be replaced by prejudices, I do not doubt ; that, in 
general, such knowledge may be more negative than 
positive ; that it gives us truths less than it removes 
errors, is certain ; but in reducing it to its last analysis, 
we must admit that it is something, that it embraces a 
field sufficiently wide, and that it presents a great num- 
ber of aspects. This is proved by the fact, that since 
there have been moralists in the world, their aliment 
has been precisely the study and description of the very 
things of which we speak. Nor is the supply ever 
exhausted ; it is constantly renewed ; the last comers 
find something to say. Literature itself rests upon 
this, or attaches itself to it ; and each of us, without 
being either moralist or writer, every day nourishes 
himself, without exhausting it, on this bitter substance. 
In a word, as the apostle says, we are " ever learning.'' 
The world, life, and ourselves, such is the triple ob- 
ject of this knowledge. This order is not unnatural ; 



94 vinet's miscellanies. 

it is that of our disenchantment. If we open upon 
life with equal confidence in these three objects, one 
after another, they cease to inspire us. Before judging 
life and ourselves, we judge society and the world. It 
is from our fellow-creatures and our relations to them, 
that, at first, we expected happiness — noble tendency 
of a soul created for love, formed to unite its life with 
the life of others, and seek its felicity from the invisible 
world. This hope, the first to blossom, is the first to 
fade. We dreamed of perfection in the objects of our 
attachment, because we were irresistibly impelled to 
dream of it somewhere, and not seeking it where it 
was, we were obliged to seek it where it was not. We 
required, (a thing as natural as unjust,) an infinite love 
which we ourselves could not offer in return, and which, 
for the same reason, no one could give us. What then 
is our disappointment, when instead of that complete 
devotion of the heart, we meet only cool friendship, 
instead of generosity scarcely justice ; when from those 
attachments we nourished with such care, we see 
springing hatred itself! But it does not occur to our 
minds that the observations which we make on other 
men, they all make on us ; that we furnish occasion for 
the same contempt, after being the objects of the same 
illusions. Thus, we do not yet know ourselves, and 
consequently do not accuse ourselves. 

Beyond the circle of our personal relations, we seek, 
in the past and in the present, characters whom we can 
admire. We have believed that such exist. Historians 
have aided our delusion ; they have seen in the distance 
of ages their lineaments beautified by the effect of 
perspective, softened by that uncertain light which dif- 
fuses itself around antique forms. We have embraced, 



THE ENDLESS STUDY. 95 

as they were offered, these grand personages. A crowd 
of ideal images of men and nations, of actions and 
events, of characters and manners have emerged be- 
fore us from the shadows of the past; — a vision of 
glory which has never lasted. Here again, to know is 
to count our losses. History better studied, the past 
controlled by the view of the present, has, one after 
another, torn from us our idols ; we have become bet- 
ter informed, that is to say, in the portrait of man, we 
have seen the shadows deepening. Our ideal, as if on 
wing, wanders through the void, seeking a place of 
rest, for this is the law of our being, but finding none. 

Nevertheless, the power of hoping, of flattering our- 
selves, is not destroyed with a single blow. Many 
more times we permit ourselves to be caught in the net 
of appearances. Often we catch at the bait, but al- 
ways with less confidence and abandonment ; till, final- 
ly, taught by experience, we form to ourselves a philos- 
ophy, and so agree to regard as an exception, as an un- 
expected blessing, what at first claimed to be the rule. 
We undeceive ourselves, as it were, in advance, so as 
not afterwards to be disappointed ; we hope for nothing, 
in order to have occasion to rejoice over a little. As all 
this revolution of sentiment takes place gradually, it 
does not produce a violent state of the soul ; that 
which, included in a description of a few lines, resem- 
bles despair, spread over a number of years, is only a 
gentle cooling of our hopes. The majority of men 
scarce perceive the change that is wrought in them ; 
they always appear to have thought the same ; no suf- 
fering sufficiently acute, has accompanied the loss of 
their illusions. They call it a spirit calmed, a youth 
passed away, the sober privilege of old age. Indeed, 



96 vinet's miscellanies. 

they almost applaud, almost congratulate themselves on 
the attainment. Yet there are persons to whom cir- 
cumstances render such a revolution exceedingly pain- 
ful. Indignation is incessantly rising in their bosom, 
and expressing itself in words and looks. A bitter re- 
sentment becomes the temper of the soul. They are 
wrong in their bitterness, as the former in their resig- 
nation. If we ought not to felicitate ourselves on such 
misconceptions, neither ought w r e to be irritated on 
their account. What right have we to be irritated at 
that, in other men, which exists in ourselves ? Grief, 
not anger, is appropriate here. But in that first period 
of our experience, what we know least is ourselves ; and 
we have one more disenchantment to experience, before 
we reach that final one. 

In this judgment of mankind, life is judged in ad- 
vance. When the lustre with which we have embel- 
lished our species is dissipated, w r hen it is no longer in 
the moral world, but in space and in time, that we have 
to find the value of life, it appears that the question it- 
self is resolved by the manner in which it is put. It 
appears, when one is reduced to ask of life, What hast 
thou to give me in years, in riches, in glory, in pleasure? 
that the answ T er is almost a matter of indifference. But 
who looks at things from a position so elevated ? In 
the case of a great number of men, no other question 
has preceded this ; and those even who have begun to 
demand of life a more elevated felicity, disappointed in 
their expectation, after all, do not renounce what may 
be called the shreds of life, or the dregs of happiness. 
A sort of melancholy logic leads them to intoxicate 
themselves with those dregs, in which they may lose the 
remembrance of the dreams which have deceived them. 



THE ENDLESS STUDY, 97 

There are not wanting examples of a transition from en- 
thusiasm to materialism, nor are there wanting reasons 
that explain how such a transition takes place. No 
one voluntarily abandons his share of the banquet; 
every one wishes to live, that is to say, every one 
grasps at new illusions, after the loss of the first. 

It might be thought, indeed, that these new illusions 
would not vanish, like the first. Long after persons 
have ceased to believe in humanity, they yet cleave to 
pleasure, to glory, to life ; to pleasure, that is, the flesh ; 
to glory, that is, the esteem of beings whom they have 
ceased to esteem ; to life, that is, to a duration which 
passes away. The eagerness with which these different 
objects are pursued, might induce us to think that they 
yet possessed our entire confidence. But here let us 
make two observations. 

In the first place, the question is not, whether such 
eager pursuit will continue, but whether, from the com- 
mencement of your career to the point which you have 
reached, you have not dropped, as a runner in the ancient 
games, some of the flowers which crowned your heads ; 
whether you judge life now, as you did at its opening ? 
The reply to that question will soon present itself. 

In the second place, perseverance in the pursuit does 
not prove, that faith in the objects of such pursuit has 
not suffered a sad diminution. Nay more, you may 
see the ardor of pursuit increasing, in the same measure 
that faith diminishes. Why ? Because the soul must 
be filled with something. There is a necessity of living, 
and of nourishing life, on whatever aliment we can find. 
The prodigal son, accustomed to the delicacy and abun- 
dance of his father's table, in his exile willingly nour- 
ished himself upon the husks which the swine did eat. 

5 



98 vinet's miscellanies. 

If the soul did not require nourishment, it would yet 
need a pursuit ; and this necessity of action impels it 
towards all ends at once. Undeceived, it is not cured ; 
indeed, it cannot be cured ; in the day that this should 
happen, it would die. It hopes as little as possible ; it 
has ceased to hope ; it only seeks. It is in the nature 
of things, that as the soul falls, the rapidity of its fall 
increases ; that while advancing in its course, and see- 
ing life incessantly impoverished, it clings more eagerly 
to what remains. Whence it comes to pass, that those 
who are the most completely disenchanted appear to 
be the least so ; and those who curse life the most bit- 
terly, seem to be the most devoted to its interest. 
Those who are nearest the idol, are despisers of the 
idol. 

Let not appearances deceive us in reference to the 
fact. The truth is, in entering upon life, we count 
upon it. If we are warned of its vanity, we do not the 
less confide in it ; the experience of another never be- 
comes our own ; the highest authority, the declara- 
tions even of Divine Wisdom, cannot preserve us from 
all illusion. In this order of things it may be said that, 
from the very beginning, each increase of knowledge is 
a disenchantment. Strange science, which consists 
not in filling, but only in emptying the soul ! After this, 
do not go and represent the world as a collection of 
men disgusted. Say only, that with the exception of 
a number of blind and stupid persons, (and there are 
men of intelligence among these stupid ones,) all men 
are more or less undeceived and disappointed ; that in 
this properly consists the science of life, and, repeating 
what we have already said, to " learn" is to estimate 
the miserv of life. 



THE ENDLESS STUDY. 99 

Here details are superfluous — no one needs that 
I should recount his history. But a particular fact 
claims our attention. 

I have spoken of pleasure, of glory, of duration. Has 
life nothing more, nothing better than these ? Yes, 
certainly, there are science and virtue — these things 
also are a part of life, and their value, which on earth 
is unequalled, does not seem in danger of suffering dim- 
inution. Have we seen the stars of the sky grow pale ? 
And shall we see the splendor of the stars of the moral 
world fade away ? Science, that disinterested, divine 
instinct, which attaches itself to nothing carnal, which 
in itself alone reveals our august origin ! — Science, 
which detaches us from the external world, separates us 
from ourselves ; disengages us from the chains of matter, 
and transports us from the midst of dull realities into 
the pure atmosphere of the ideal! — Science, one of the 
attributes of the Divinity, one of the marks of his im- 
age in man ! — I know well that it has nobly engrossed 
entire lives. But every soul endowed with any eleva- 
tion, that is, with anything of earnestness, cannot fail 
in its estimate of so noble a subject, to seek a unity, a 
completeness which shall be worthy of itself ; for science, 
after all, is not the whole of life, it is only one of its ele- 
ments. The soul must seek unity and harmony here. It 
ought, so to speak, to find a head for that crown ; a ped- 
estal for that statue ; a sky for that sun. Are these the 
head, the life, and the soul of man ? Everywhere the 
disproportion strikes us. Everywhere the dignity of 
the details reveals the wretchedness of the whole : we 
know not how so noble an element can have lost itself 
in so mournful a chaos ; and life which already appeared 
to us little in its own littleness, now appears still more 



100 vinet's miscellanies. 

so, in the grandeur of that very instinct, of that very- 
interest which it ought to contain, but which tran- 
scends it. So that if we do not directly contract a 
disgust for science, at least, the feeling of its being 
out of place ; in a word, the impossibility of attaching 
it worthily to life, astonishes, overwhelms us. How 
many men of genius have been seized with a profound 
sadness at this very thought ! How many, appalled by 
the problems and contradictions which science suggests 
in the present condition of man, in the midst of their 
enthusiasm have doubted, whether it be a gift of God, 
or a temptation of a demon ! How many, moreover, 
seeing it corrupted by our passions, and in its turn 
nourishing and irritating these passions, unfaithful as it 
appears to its origin and vocation, have beheld in it one 
of our direst calamities ; nay, the source of all our ca- 
lamities ! 

" But virtue," you will say, " leave us in life the 
charm of virtue, and the whole of life is saved." In 
some sense, of course, it is impossible to cease con- 
fiding in virtue, that is to say, in the necessity, the sanc- 
tity and inviolability of duty. It is impossible for him 
who has once exercised it, even in a single and isolated 
instance, not to find in the impression thence derived a 
proof, that virtue is a reality, the noblest of realities. 
But I affirm that the more irresistible such a convic- 
tion, the more insupportable to the soul its inability to 
solve the difficulties which the presence of that great 
idea suggests. The same theory which is required 
with reference to science is also required with reference 
to virtue ; so that the question recurs, to what in life does 
it conform ? Will you make it conform to the welfare 
of society ? This, doubtless, is one of its results ; but 



THE ENDLESS STUDY. 101 

it cannot be its end ; your own consciousness, and the 
very notion of virtue prove this. Is it then the inte- 
rest of the individual ? But what interest ? If mate- 
rial or physical interest is in question, virtue consists 
in sacrificing it to the first claim of duty. If internal 
satisfaction, the end is noble, but it is too narrow : for un- 
less that satisfaction be the approbation of our self- 
love, the suffrage of which cannot be the end of virtue, 
it would not suffice us. What is sometimes said of 
conscience is thoughtless and vain ; in the long run its 
testimony does not satisfy us ; indeed, it is of no value 
unless it certify us, that a judge of whom our con- 
science is only the representative, is satisfied also. We 
need an approver, and that approver must be a person ; 
for we are unwilling to be the servants, the friends, the 
children of a mere idea ; we desire to attach ourselves 
to something more vital than moral order, that is, to a 
Being, to a Soul in whom our life may find an echo. 
The true name of the satisfaction to which genuine virtue 
aspires is glory. Shall we seek it among men ? Virtue 
is tarnished by that very search. Shall we seek it else- 
where ? That can only be with God. But let us be- 
ware of confounding God with his name, of taking a 
word for a being. Where is God, and where is the 
road which leads to God, in order that we may receive 
the homage of our virtuous actions ? That road is 
found by the heart alone — has our heart found it ? 
Does our heart rise, rise with all our life, to God ? Do 
we seek the favor of God ? Do we live according to his 
will, and in the hope of his approbation ? In a word, does 
our virtue find its issues in him ? When we have laid 
our offering upon his altar, have not our passions come 
during the night, and removed it to another altar, which, 



102 vinet's miscellanies. 

if it is not what our conscience, alas ! is what our heart 
has chosen ? Does not our virtue, after all, return, by 
a circuitous path, to ourselves ? Do we not take with 
the one hand what we have given with the other ? If 
on the other hand, God be the first and last term of 
our virtue, and his love the fire of our moral life, I 
would say, that by that fact alone, life, in effect, is 
saved, all illusions are replaced by the truth, all contempt 
is forever banished. But, whoever cannot bear his tes- 
timony that virtue has been conceived and practised by 
him in such a spirit as this, is not placed beyond the com- 
mon destiny ; with reference to virtue, as to everything 
else, he is doomed to disappointment. Pressed by a 
double necessity to recognize the reality, the sove- 
reignty of virtue, but not knowing where to place 
it ; not finding for it in the life any spot sufficiently 
large, any basis sufficiently firm, attracted towards 
virtue and repelled from it by turns ; believing in duty, 
yet not believing in it; he is driven by the incessant 
return of this moral oscillation, far from that glorious 
dawn of life, in which nothing dimmed to his eyes, the 
reality of virtue, or the certainty of its promises. 

Thus even that which is greatest and truest detaches 
itself, like a flower, from the crown of convictions and 
hopes which encircled our youthful brow; the disen- 
chantment of virtue is added to the number of our losses, 
or, if you please, to our science, and from the whole of 
life, in which we trusted with such delightful assurance, 
nothing entire remains. 

Nay more, even if everything remained entire, we 
should only feel the more keenly the grief of another 
discovery, which we cannot escape. All-adorned with 
these illusions, life precipitates itself towards death. 



THE ENDLESS STUDY. 103 

Thither it hurries, with a constantly increasing pace. Ev- 
ery one knows, when beginning life., that he cannot live 
always ; but who could have expected to live so brief 
a period ? Who, at least, did not expect that years 
w r ould be equal to years? Who could have thought 
that each would be shorter than the preceding, that the 
velocity of time would forever increase, and without 
diminishing the number of our years, would actually 
reduce the length of our career ? None — no, not one ; 
and so true is this, that the younger portion of my 
readers will not credit me, with reference to this flight 
of time ; they will not believe it until they have proved 
it by experience. In a word, it is only by living that 
we become undeceived with reference to life,— this illu- 
sion, so necessary, is the last which leaves us. 

See, then, what it is to learn. The matter is vast, 
and however life may be abridged, an entire one would 
not suffice for it ; should we live an age, we should ever 
be learning. If you say that the logical conclusion from 
all this is despair, you are perhaps right ; happily, man 
does not submit his destiny to the mercy of logic. The 
charm of living is great ; in the privation of all other 
blessings, living is yet something ; and what otherwise 
is life entirely despoiled ? Providence has been so lib- 
eral to man, that man has not been able to nullify all 
his gifts ; there still remain sufficient blessings to attach 
us to life, which were intended to attach us to God ; we 
feel ourselves impoverished rather than poor, and al- 
though this very feeling may be worse than poverty it- 
self, yet as we do not realize it, except feebly and at 
intervals, it leaves us more happiness than most persons 
imagine, a happiness which lasts so long as we are igno- 
rant that the majority of our losses is our own work, 



104 vinet's miscellanies. 

and that we possess infinitely less than was destined 
for us. But that, too, we learn at last ; and this is the 
third topic of instruction which I proposed to discuss. 

We begin by observing that there are two ways of 
knowing ourselves, the one natural, the other I will call 
supernatural : the first, limited, incomplete ; the second 
going to the bottom of the subject and exhausting it ; 
the first more extensive than profound, the second 
boundless in every respect. From the first knowledge 
to the second there is an abyss which God only can fill ; 
and he fills it by making himself known to the soul ; 
then it is that the soul knows itself truly ; for the secret 
of its evil being found to consist in its separation from its 
centre, which is God, its reunion with its centre must at 
the same time be its supreme revelation as well as its 
sovereign remedy. But before that divine ray falls into 
its darkness, a true ray, though less vivid, may penetrate 
the upper strata of its shadows ; up, therefore, to a cer- 
tain point, man, reduced to natural means, to the teach- 
ings of time and experience, may succeed in knowing 
himself. But what is the nature of this knowledge ? 
Does it pass, from a deep conviction of its feebleness, 
to a lofty notion of its strength ? Or do its discoveries 
follow the very opposite direction ? 

Who among us, arrived at mature age, (1 make an 
abstraction of the influence of the Gospel,) finds himself 
stronger, better, and purer than he imagined himself in 
the days of his youth ? Who on the contrary does not, 
with regret, remember the confidence in his own nature, 
with which he entered the world ? When few passions 
ha,d taken possession of our heart, and little responsi- 
bility attached to our actions, no visible object inter- 
posed between us and virtue ! Virtue, in itself so beau- 



THE ENDLESS STUDY. 105 

tiful, appears to us in her own colors so long as we have 
no interest to tarnish her image. Man, indeed, does not 
hate it for itself, but for the checks it puts upon his de- 
sires. If its presence brought no constraint, and its as- 
pect no humiliation, he would never cease to rely upon it, 
and to find it beautiful and attractive. Such is his dispo- 
sition at the beginning of his career, and such the ground 
of his confidence in himself. He loves virtue in view 
of the benefit she confers ; he confidently calculates that 
such benefit will turn to his account ; for he calculates 
without reference to his passions, which he does not yet 
know. But these passions come ; they claim their part 
in life, and that part is the whole ; passion on one side, 
virtue on the other, is equally exacting, equally insatia- 
ble ; but passion is a real and living being, that is, the 
man himself; and virtue, why, that is an idea, until it is 
united, in our soul, to the thought of God, and thus be- 
comes, I do not say a passion, but the strongest, the 
most dominant of all affections. In that struggle be- 
tween a being and a principle, between life and an idea, 
most evident it is that being and life must prevail ; and 
the only revenge of the vanquished idea, is to raise in 
the soul a murmur, now plaintive, now threatening, 
which gradually subsides as life is prolonged. In the first 
days of his moral life, what high estimate has he of the 
sanctity of virtue, and the impossibility, so to speak, of 
violating it ! What relish for purity, what disgust for 
everything which taints it ! What astonishment at the 
baseness and perversity of mankind ! What ignorance 
of their ways ! what ignorance of their calculations and 
aims ! what burning indignation against evil ! what 
vows, what promises to combat it with his testimony, to 
abash it by his example ! what certainty of remaining 

5* 



106 VINET 5 S MISCELLANIES. 

conqueror ! what recoil even at the thought of its touch- 
ing him ! Evil, nevertheless, is already here, the ideal 
is even now tarnished ; his very first experiences have 
been falls ; but in that era of thoughtlessness we count 
less with reference to the falls we have suffered, than 
those which we are not to suffer. Happy age ! dreams 
of hope ! how prompt are ye to fade away ! 

One after another the passions present themselves — 
we resist them at first, then treat with them. In that 
unequal discussion, the only thing which is ordinarily 
obtained is, to simplify our defeat and shame ; that is, 
to yield to one passion which takes the place of many 
others incompatible with it ; we are vanquished, but it 
is only by one conqueror ; we give conscience credit 
for a result which is only due to necessity ; we are un- 
willing to see that in ceding to this one passion the 
claims of all the rest, we have in reality yielded to the 
whole ! But of what value is this miserable illusion ? 
We are vanquished, and we know it. We no longer 
doubt our failures, and the only question is, how shall 
we resign ourselves to them, how accommodate our- 
selves to this new world into which we have entered 
under the guidance of sin, how suffer the manners which 
but lately disgusted us, how make the calculations of 
interest which we never wished to make, how acclimate 
ourselves in that society which we regarded with such 
distant and lofty contempt ! Then must we submit to 
the intercourse and familiarities of a despicable frater- 
nity. Precipitated from the heights of life into the 
darkness where so many have preceded us, we must see 
all the dead who have gone before us lift themselves at 
our approach, and cry out, " Aha ! art thou become as 
one of us !" Then must we learn (O most mournful of 



THE ENDLESS STUDY. 107 

all experiences !) to despise ourselves ! Yes, we must 
know and bear ourselves. 

Self-knowledge — but how is that possessed? It is 
interesting to see how. Man does not so soon take 
part in his own degradation, and never resigns himself 
to it entirely. At each step he takes in life, he needs 
to persuade himself that he is advancing right ; and 
from the need of delusion, delusion itself springs, which, 
impossible in reference to the whole, is possible in 
reference to details. He knows himself very well in 
general, but, in each particular, he is ignorant. He 
despises himself with reference to the sum-total of his 
actions, and yet has some ground of approbation as to 
each of them. He performs each (I speak of our 
ordinary actions) with a sort of conviction as to its 
propriety ; he is, so to speak, conscientious in his sin, 
faithful in his falsehood — a circumstance which gives 
to his conduct, to his discourse a feature of amiableness 
and worth, the impression of which upon others is so 
much more sure as he himself has been the first to 
receive it. 

But will not the knowledge of ourselves, however 
general it may be, at least have the effect of reconcil- 
ing us to humanity and to life, when we recognize 
that we partake of the feelings of the first, and that it 
is ourselves who abstract from the second the greater 
part of its value and beauty ? Will not the last part 
of our mournful knowledge alleviate the impression of 
the two first? That were just, but it is not natural. 
Nothing sweet, nothing pure can spring from that 
which humbles without softening us. The wrongs of 
life and of society aggravate our own. The more we 
are compelled to hate ourselves, the more we hate that 



108 VINET S MISCELLANIES. 

which surrounds us. Our internal discontent is a gall 
which spreads itself over all objects. Here we can see 
how the logic of the heart overpowers that of the 
intellect. Nothing could be more agreeable to the 
latter than to cherish indulgence for the faults of which 
we feel ourselves guilty : but if we study ourselves 
thoroughly, we shall find that it is precisely those very 
faults to which we are inexorable. It is precisely such 
that we penetrate the most readily, of which we most 
perfectly detect the secret, in our neighbor ; we hate 
them in him, with all the hatred which we withhold from 
them in ourselves ; we tear from our own hearts, to thrust 
into that of our brethren, the dart with which we feel 
ourselves pierced ; we punish our failings in the person 
of others. Our fellow-men, in spite of themselves, 
have us for confidants and judges of their most secret 
movements, which we have divined, prophesied, signal- 
ized in advance ;. we penetrate the whole sin, and the 
consequences of it, in their scarcely formed intention. 
Thus, the discoveries which we have made in our own 
hearts find those which are analogous to them in the 
hearts of others ; less frequently does the observation 
of others enable us more fully to know ourselves. But 
however this may be, the field of our observation is 
constantly enlarging ; each day increases the treasure 
of our bitter science ; we are always learning, but 
never come to the knowledge of the truth. 

I admit, indeed, that all these things are truths, but 
not the truth. It is with such truths as it is with a 
mass of words and phrases thrown upon paper at haz- 
ard, and without order. Perhaps the totality of these 
words and phrases may compose an admirable poem ; 
but the poem is not there, until the poet arrive, and 



THE ENDLESS STUDY. 109 

from these scattered elements reconstruct his master- 
piece, by impressing upon them the unity of his living 
thought. These truths which we have acquired, in spite 
of ourselves, however clear and certain each may 
appear, form, in our minds, nothing but a disordered 
chaos, a mass of contradictions. Can this chaos, these 
contradictions be the truth? The truth, well under- 
stood, ought to have one or the other of two op- 
posite effects ; either to overwhelm us with irreparable 
despair, or afford us immeasurable consolation, either 
to render us entirely miserable, or entirely happy : 
but what we have learned from humanity, from life, 
and ourselves, has not a sufficiently decided character 
to produce either the one or the other of these effects. 
There remains something to that humanity which we 
hate, to that life which we despise, to that heart which 
we feel agitated by such opposing sentiments. Some- 
thing always occurs to divert our hatred, our ennui, 
and our humiliation. Something even mingles itself 
with our misfortune, which either stifles it or lulls it 
to sleep. We are not happy, we are not satisfied ; 
conscience, interrogated in the silence of reflection, de- 
clares that we cannot live so : we live nevertheless, we 
resign ourselves, we get accustomed to our fate ; we 
breathe a tainted air, after all it is air ; and the human 
heart, banished from its natural atmosphere, which is 
that of certainty and peace, accustoms itself, like the 
old navigator, to rocking on the abyss, to sleeping 
amidst the storms. 

But every time he enters within himself, a voice 
distinctly cries to him, that, after having learned so 
many things, he does not know the truth. Join to that 
voice of conscience the apostolic voice of St. Paul. In 



110 VINET S MISCELLANIES. 

his estimation the truth has not the two aspects which 
human ignorance is obliged to give it; for him it is 
not despair or peace, misfortune or happiness — it is 
happiness alone, peace alone. In him the question is 
resolved by a decisive fact. The truth, in his mind, 
has nothing but beneficent qualities. The truth calms ; 
but, in spite of all your discoveries, you have not 
peace. The truth sanctifies ; but, after learning so 
much, you are not holy. The truth humbles ; but all 
your experience has not inspired you with humility. 
The truth makes free ; but, wise as you are, freedom is 
not yet yours. The truth walks with charity ; it in- 
spires, it commands generosity; but your mournful 
studies have only rendered more relentless the severity 
of your judgments ; and, in the result, you have learned 
to be indulgent only to yourselves. How then can you 
possess the truth, if these are its characteristics ? And 
what reason has the Apostle to say, that while al- 
ways learning, ye never come to the knowledge of the 
truth ! 

But do you seek for that truth, the absence of which 
you feel so much ? Not even that. You have learned 
just enough to know that you do not possess it ; the nat- 
ural, the imperative conclusion from all your acquisi- 
tions, simply enables you to feel your poverty ; but you 
are willing to be poor, in that manner; for, in your 
estimation, the consciousness of such poverty is actu- 
ally wealth. " Pride," says a Christian genius, "coun- 
terbalances all our miseries ;" "it is something, even," he 
says again, " to feel our misery ;" but he has not told us, 
that it is everything : and how many people are thus 
persuaded! Yes, pride counterbalances all our mise- 
ries. Yes, the deplorable satisfaction of having, better 



THE ENDLESS STUDY. Ill 

than others, seen the degradation of our nature and our 
condition ; the pleasure of making a parade of our unfor- 
tunate penetration ; the vanity of emerging from a 
crowd of credulous ones, and taking our place among 
the disenchanted ; the unnatural joy of displaying our 
wounds, and those of the world ; — this it is which pays 
us for the sacrifice of the truth.* But if the flatterers 
of mankind ought to be pitied, what sentiments ought 
those to inspire, who, with levity of heart, with a 
savage pleasure, make it the subject of their satire, 
and lead us, with impious jests and diabolical laugh- 
ter, to the funeral of hope ? What name shall we 
give to those, who, without any necessity, insult us 
with the display of a malady without a remedy, of a 
misfortune without a consolation? Certainly, if ever 
the influence of the Prince of Darkness must appear, 
it is when shedding light upon the most afflicting 
aspects of human condition, incessantly calling our 
attention thither, multiplying discoveries upon the sub- 
ject, and intoxicating our pride by the picture of our 
misery, he arrests us at the limit which it is so desira- 
ble to pass, and represses the noblest of all curiosity 
by that fatal word which formerly sealed the condem- 
nation of the Just One — " What is truth ?" 

" What is truth ?" Whatever a boding voice may 
say, and whatever response, in accordance with this, 
may be given by the evil passions of our nature, we 
desire to know it — we desire to know the truth — nay, 
we desire thoroughly to possess it ; for it exists. But 
there are two ways of receiving it : may we know 
which is good ! 

* See Montaigne. 



THE ENDLESS STUDY. 



PART H. 

The truth, which we have so often named, without 
denning it, in the preceding discourse, is the truth of 
the Gospel. 

Truth one and complex, it unites the knowledge of 
ourselves and of God— of ourselves in relation to God, 
of God in relation to us : in other words, condemnation 
and salvation, the fall and the restoration. 

This truth is the truth — the complete revelation of 
all which on earth we need to know, touching ourselves 
and God. It leaves beyond it a thousand objects of 
knowledge ; but with reference to its own object, the 
incomparable importance of which casts all others into 
the shadow, it leaves nothing essential to be desired by 
him who receives it. And, what is admirable ! complete 
at its first reception, offered to us entire and at once, 
susceptible, so to speak, of being embraced at a single 
glance, or imbibed at a single inspiration, it is never- 
theless progressive; its radiance ever increases dur- 
ing the longest career ; its aspects multiply with the 
aspects of life ; always the same, it is always new ; an 
instant suffices to possess it, ages will not suffice to 
fathom it : — in which sense, it is also an endless study. 
This truth, the substance of which is a fact which 
we have not to create, and which we could not even 



THE ENDLESS STUDY. 113 

conceive, has been revealed to us ; and as it does not 
belong to us to create it, so it does not depend upon us 
to believe it. The impossibility of believing truly, 
without the aid of the Holy Spirit, is a part of that 
very truth, and is one of the objects of Christian 
faith. Nevertheless, so far from wanting in affinity to 
our nature, it finds a correspondence there, and closely 
unites itself with our deepest and strongest instincts. 
It fills the void, illumines the darkness, binds the disor- 
dered elements, and forms the whole into a divine 
unity. Not only does it make itself believed, but felt ; 
appropriated, the soul does not distinguish it from its 
primal beliefs, from that natural light which lighteth 
every man that cometh into the world. In a word, 
born in a region infinitely higher than our reason and 
nature, it unites itself, and forms a consistent whole, 
with those immutable truths to which nature and reason 
bear testimony. Only, it is not our thoughts which ex- 
tend themselves to it ; but it is this truth which, de- 
scending from the centre of inaccessible light, comes to 
add itself to our thoughts. 

Thence it is evident, that in the acquisition of the 
truth, we do not remain neutral and inactive; nay 
more, this demands and puts in operation the deepest 
and most energetic powers of our nature. Although 
all the grace and glory are due to the Divine Spirit, the 
acquisition of the truth is more than an event in our 
life, it is an act ; an act the most moral, the most pro- 
found which we can consummate ; an act which we 
are under obligation to perform in a manner more pe- 
culiar than any other ; an act to which we can be ex- 
horted, in which we can be directed, and on account 
of which we can be approved or blamed. 



114 vinet's miscellanies. 

Thus, wnen St. Paul speaks to us of persons who 
are ever learning without ever coming to the knowl- 
edge of the truth, it is not simply a misfortune, but a 
fault, which he indicates. This fault is not only that 
of the men whom we have spoken of in a preced- 
ing discourse, of those men who, instructed in so many 
single truths respecting human nature, themselves, and 
life, proceed no further, and stop short of the truth 
which is offered and announced to them. This fault 
belongs to another class of men, who having, as it ap- 
pears, penetrated further, and passed the limit which 
separates natural from supernatural revelation, having, 
in a word, accepted the truth of the Gospel, have not 
seized it as it ought to be seized ; who, instead of assim- 
ilating the truth to their whole being, have appropri- 
ated it only to their understanding, to that, namely, 
which is most exterior in their interior nature. These 
men, in a sphere, in appearance far above that of the 
first, can, like them, learn much, can learn unceasingly, 
but never come to the knowledge of the truth ; in a 
word, while having the truth, they remain strangers to 
the truth. 

If any one should deem it strange that we can ap- 
propriate a fact by the intellect, and yet not know it, 
we would refer him not only to the New Testament, 
which everywhere supposes what we affirm, which 
everywhere designates by the name of knowledge some- 
thing which is more than an act or a condition of the 
mind, but we would refer him also to the very nature 
of things and the import of words. Knowledge has 
different instruments and different conditions, according 
to its different objects. We know by the eye things 
of sight, by the ear those of hearing, by the heart those 



THE ENDLESS STUDY. 115 

of the heart, by the intellect ideas of all things. The 
intellect, then, appropriates only the ideas of things, not 
their impression, their reality. If it suffices in science, 
properly so called, which has for its object only the 
ideas of things, with their logical connection, it does 
not suffice in the sphere of facts, the end of which is, 
to be put in immediate contact with the living forces 
of the soul, and which, without such contact, lose their 
character, and so far as that relation is concerned, their 
existence.* Doubtless, in this kind of knowledge, as in 
all others, the understanding has its functions to per- 
form, but the truth is not arrested by the mirror which 
it presents to it ; it passes through that, in order to be 
reflected in the more interior mirror of the soul. In- 
deed we may say with reference to truths of that sort, 
that they are not perceived or comprehended, except 
as they reach that part of our nature which is the seat 
of our affections, and consequently the true centre of 
our life. 

The world is accustomed to give to the word truth a 
sense too narrow and too particular. It is regarded 
commonly only as the conformity of the representation 
with the object represented ; but truth may reside in 
facts as well as in ideas. The conformity of means 
with the end, of action with principle, of life with idea, 
these also are truth : what we call virtue is nothing 
else than truth in disposition and action. In the matter 
of morals, truth cannot be separated from life, it is life 
itself. And if, instead of passing into the life, it remain 
in the thought, it merits not the name of truth. When 

* That is, they have an objective, but not a subjective existence. 
They do not exist for us. They might as well not exist at all. — T. 



116 vinet's miscellanies. 

you ask me if I am in the truth, you do not ask what 
I know, but what I am. 

In applying these ideas to Christian truth, we find, 
that to be in the truth is to become, by our affections 
and our conduct, like to Jesus Christ ; it is to follow him, 
spiritually, in all the events through which he has passed, 
in his death by our death to sin, in his resurrection by 
our regeneration, in his invisible glory by our life hid 
with him in God ; in a word, it is spiritually to re-live 
the entire life of Jesus Christ. This only can be called 
knowing the truth, living in the truth. 

If religion is something more than a science, if it is 
a life flowing from a fact, it is clear that it cannot 
spring from the intellect alone ; and whoever sees in it 
only a system of ideas, is yet without the truth. Nay, 
should he give all possible attention to each of these 
ideas, their mutu a relations, and their combination, 
and in each of these departments daily make some new 
discovery, all his progress would not conduct him a 
single step towards the truth. What he has learned 
may be exactly true, but it is not the truth. 

Let us take a glance at the vast field of religious 
speculation. We find there, first of all, facts to be con- 
fided to our memory : religion is interlaced in the tissue 
of a long history, which stretches from the first days 
of the world, through many generations of empires, and 
carries along with it all the names and all the recollec- 
tions which envelop the history of the universe. What 
personages with their characteristics, what institutions 
with their principles, what events with their causes it 
presents for our consideration, from the fate of the first 
pair to the present condition of human society, so com- 
plicated and so problematical ! What facts are attached 



THE ENDLESS STUDY. 117 

to each of these facts ! how their aspects multiply as 
we gaze ! how reflection renews incessantly that won- 
drous picture ! But the history upon which religion is 
founded must be believed, and consequently proved. 
Here opens to the activity of the intellect an arena still 
more vast. The precautions of a good and serious 
faith have opened a route which the prejudices of scep- 
ticism, and involuntary doubts born of successive dis- 
coveries have greatly enlarged, and which, ready to 
close itself up, is re-opened unceasingly, to close itself 
anew, and then to be re-opened once more. An objec- 
tion abandoned permits another to rise ; the field of 
discussion changes from epoch to epoch; religion is 
attacked on its historical basis, with the natural sciences, 
with monuments, with metaphysics, or rather with all 
the repugnances of the heart, aided by all the resources 
of the intellect ; and the truth, after having vanquished 
a thousand adversaries which ever rise again, sees a 
thousand others spring up with new weapons, or to 
speak with more accuracy, imbued with the spirit of a 
new age ; so that the believer who turns to this quarter 
his intellectual activity, will find, if he pleases, sufficient 
employment for his entire life. If from the domain of 
the apologetic, he passes into that of Christian philoso- 
phy, what an immense career opens before him ! 

The system of Christianity, that is to say, the rela- 
tions of its different parts among themselves, and of the 
whole to one central idea, to one end ; the comparison 
of that religion with human nature, with reference to 
which God, so to speak, has taken the measure, and 
traced the plan ; the explanation, alternately, of Chris- 
tianity by nature, and of nature by Christianity ; the 
definition of the Christian spirit and its application to 



118 vinet's miscellanies. 

the details of life ; the harmony of this with all other 
systems, each of which, being incapable of containing 
or of explaining all facts, has left some great chasm 
which Jesus Christ has filled, an immense difficulty 
which he has caused to disappear ; in a word, the har- 
monizing by Christianity, and by it alone, of all the con- 
tradictions, of all the desperate qualities of which our 
life and our nature even, seem to be formed.*" — These 
will give you an idea, but a feeble one, of the infinite 
speculations in which the study of Christian philoso- 
phy can engage a reflective mind. But this is not all. 
Religion may be contemplated as a fact taking place 
among all those which compose human life, control- 
ling them, imposing upon them its character, constrain- 
ing them to unity, whether with itself or with one an- 
other ; penetrating, now with the weight of its mass, 
now with the energy of its action, or the irresistible charm 
of its influence, into the most extended spaces, and into 
the remotest corners of human existence ; powerful sap 
of the tree, whose trunk is buried deep in the soil, and 
which flows imperceptibly to the most delicate extrem- 
ities of the branches. Private life and public society, 
laws and manners, literature and the arts, everything 
relating to the government of material interests, becomes 
Christian under the influence of Christianity ; it con- 
verts all things into its own substance ; with it, every- 
thing becomes religion ; a perfect connection, at once 

* Dualities — that is, the opposite poles of truth, or the apparently- 
contradictory aspects, which it always involves ; such as the finite and 
the infinite, the conditioned and the unconditioned, the created and the 
uncreated, the material and the immaterial, the human and the divine, 
the God absolute, the God revealed, the God infinite and therefore in- 
comprehensible, the God personal and therefore known.— T. 



THE ENDLESS STUDY. 119 

logical and moral, is established between all the parts 
of human life ; that life loses none of its natural ele- 
ments, it sacrifices only dangerous superfluities already 
condemned by the sages of all time ; it preserves more 
than those austere spirits desired to retain, whom the 
feebleness of their means constrained to exaggeration, 
and who imposed upon human nature by so much more as 
they were the less capable of inspiring it. I might 
say much more. But I stop here, for fear I should stop 
too late ; for I should transcend all bounds by underta- 
king to indicate, I do not say new subjects of study, but 
merely to recall those which have long ago been dis- 
cussed. Judge then by this, what a harvest of ideas 
grows in this last domain, and combining, by thought, 
those spheres, each of which might absorb a man entire, 
acknowledge that the intellect, applied to religion, might 
find there, according to St. Paul, matter for endless 
study. 

Yes, endless study, without ever coming to the knowl- 
edge of the truth. But you will say to me, can it be 
so ? is it really so ? Yes, — examples abound ; they have 
abounded at all times. This fact answers both your 
questions. If the fact appear to you inconceivable, then 
am I astonished at your astonishment, for it is perfectly 
clear that reasoning does not necessarily terminate in 
feeling ; for when thought is preoccupied more with the 
idea of a fact than with the fact itself, the idea remains, 
and the fact escapes. It is as if the light of the sun should 
prevent a man from seeing the sun. In vain are the 
ideas connected with Christianity numerous and beau- 
tiful. Their very number and beauty become a snare 
which hinders us from going further ; the interest of cu- 
riosity absorbs all other interests. In vain are those 



120 vinet's miscellanies, 

ideas so close to the truth that they appear the substance 
itself ; a new snare this, greater than the first ; if they 
were at a greater distance, and completely foreign to it, 
illusion would not be possible ; so that it has been fre- 
quently remarked, that labors the most distant from 
Christian speculation, provided they are not in opposi- 
tion to Christian morality, are less fitted to withdraw the 
soul from that which ought to be its principal object on 
earth. Often better by far, for the religious life of the 
heart, to be a merchant, an artist, a mathematician, than 
a theologian.*' 

But what is it, to be out of the truth, except to 
be contrary to the truth? To accept it, but in a 
spirit different from its own, what else is this but to 
give it the he, to deny it in fact, while recognizing it in 
principle, and thus tacitly to protest against the designs 
and plan of God ? He has embodied the truth, and we 
disembody it. He has given us realities, and we give 
him back ideas. He has created a world, and we make 
it a system. He has caused to rise upon us the Sun of 
Righteousness, with healing in his beams ; but we re- 
fuse the heat of that glorious orb, which is light and 
heat at once, and accept only the light. But what am 
I saying — that we accept the light ? God has designed 
(and that is one of the most remarkable traits of his 
work) to take away from us the idea that we can invent 
the light, and draw the truth from our own thoughts ; 
he has designed to disabuse us respecting the all-suffi- 

* This is strikingly demonstrated by the history of theological polem- 
ics. The world has seen no deeper sceptics and enemies of the truth, 
than the theological speculators of France and Germany. Nay, among 
ourselves are some, who, occupying the sacred desk, are doing all they 
can to destroy the Gospel. 



THE ENDLESS STUDY. 121 

ciency of our reason, and induce us to submit to the 
truth. But on condition of considering it only with our 
understanding, that is to say, ourselves, instead of 
submitting to the truth, we submit only to ourselves. 
By applying our intellect to revelation, we make it in 
some measure our own work, we replace faith by phil- 
osophical certainty, we submit to ourselves, not to that 
" demonstration of power" of which the Holy Spirit is 
the author, but to the argumentation of the schools ; so 
that Jesus Christ finds in us partisans rather than disci- 
ples, sectarians rather than believers. Elaborated by 
our intellect, his Gospel becomes our Gospel, his reve- 
lation our philosophy, his mysteries our logical necessi- 
ties, Jesus Christ another necessity of the same kind, 
and God himself the mere product of our thought. Is not 
this to go contrary to the designs of God, and falsely to 
inscribe ourselves Christians, if not contrary to the let- 
ter, at least to the spirit of his declarations, to be 
Christians in a way the least Christian, and to destroy 
the Gospel by pretending to establish it ? 

Here I might further inquire, if these thoughts, to 
consider them only as thoughts, are entirely conformed 
to those of God ; if these formulas, which we have con- 
structed, and which every Christian, I presume, will ac- 
cept without difficulty, signify in our mind, exactly the 
same thing which they do in his ; if, indeed, they do 
not, under a perfect similarity of language, conceal 
a very great difference of ideas ? Consider, wheth- 
er or not any one can distinguish, as we have done, 
in the matter of religion, what belongs to the intel- 
lect, and what to the heart, that truth, nevertheless, 
is one, and derives its character only from the combina- 
tion of thought and feeling applied to the same fact, so 

6 



122 vinet's miscellanies. 

that we cannot have the whole of the feeling, without 
the whole of the thought ; nor the whole of the thought, 
without the whole of the feeling, The whole truth is 
not perfectly conceived, but by the whole man ; and 
although it may be impossible for the Christian in real- 
ity to describe that in which he differs from the Chris- 
tian in thought, although he finds, in despite of a con- 
fused sentiment of discordance, a certain harmony upon 
many points, and language itself fails to indicate the deli- 
cate shades of difference, — yet these shades, in their 
delicateness, are infinitely important. Could they be 
expressed in language, it would be found even, that the 
thought of these two persons is not exactly parallel; 
and that, in a relation purely speculative, the Christian 
in idea does not possess all the truth which is possessed 
by the Christian complete. 

We have one more step to take together; and 
perhaps your reflections have already anticipated it. 
The exclusive application of the intellect to religion, 
not only does not advance us towards the truth, that 
is to say, towards life, but it tends to draw us further 
and further from it. Let us return to our princi- 
ples : to be in the truth, is not to be spectators of the 
truth, but it is to live the life of Jesus Christ ; and with- 
out suggesting here all the characteristics of that life, 
we limit ourselves to saying, that it is a life of self-con- 
trol and humility. But knowledge dissipates and in- 
flates ; these are its natural effects ; for it must be ad- 
mitted, that we ought to call that dissipation, which 
estranges the soul from the true end of life, and that 
inflation or pride which gives to man an exaggerated 
idea of his power and independence. In this sense, we 
may comprehend how an individual the most serious 



THE ENDLESS STUDY. 



123 



and modest, in the eyes of the world, is proud and vain, 
in the eyes of the truth ; for if he forgets not the end to 
which human wisdom ought to aspire, he wanders from 
that which divine wisdom prescribes. If he does not 
voluntarily raise himself above his fellow-men, he raises 
himself, with them, above the condition of humanity, 
and, we may say, to a level with God himself. But, I 
would ask, can anything be more contrary to the spirit 
of that Gospel which he has studied, and which he 
claims to understand ? And will not a study which, des- 
titute of a counterpoise, delivers man to that double 
tendency, a study every advance in which leads one just 
so far into pride and dissipation of mind, every day 
draw him further and further from the truth — in other 
words, further and further from life ? 

Habits of thought are not less tyrannical than others, 
and a time comes when return is impossible, even to the 
strongest will. Follow the moral history of a man 
abandoned to the tendency which we have indicated. 
Seriousness of spirit was no stranger to the first steps 
in his progress ; it is scarcely possible that he regarded 
religion simply as a subject of philosophical specula- 
tion ; his first design was doubtless to apply it to his 
heart, and submit to it his life. But that impression 
was superficial and fugitive; thought, powerfully ex- 
cited, threw itself upon that rich prey, and turned it 
entirely to its own account. That inclination became 
dominant and tyrannical ; everything which was in- 
tended as aliment for the soul, became food for the 
intellect. Each gain of the intellect was a loss to the 
soul, which, deprived of stimulus and condemned to 
inaction, lost its energy in idleness. That man, having 
acquired the habit of seizing everything on the intel- 



124 vinet's miscellanies. 

lectual side, gradually becomes incapable of seizing it 
under any other aspect. Strange ! he becomes more 
and more capable of explaining the effects of truth upon 
the soul, less and less capable of feeling its power upon 
his own ; he has spoken, he has written, perhaps, upon 
the process of grace, but his heart has grown more and 
more impenetrable to the influence of grace. In all his 
religious reflections, the idea of the thing has presented 
itself with the thing, nay has interposed itself between 
his mind and the fact ; soon indeed he has seen nothing 
in these facts but phantoms, which faithfully exhibit 
their surface and outline, but contain no substance 
whatever. He has discovered the evil, and is troubled 
— he has finally tried to make of religion, so long his 
study, his personal affair ; he endeavors to place him- 
self under the action of truth, and in dependence upon 
it ; but such is the force of habit, that at each attempt 
his intellect forces itself between his conscience and 
the object. Seeking in vain a religion in his system, 
he ever finds only a system in religion. In his anguish, 
he would willingly forget, willingly be ignorant; he 
envies the credulity of the simple and of children ; he 
would give all his science for one of their sighs, all his 
intelligence for their heart — for his own has ceased to 
beat, it has become intellect. He wishes that Chris- 
tianity were gone from his memory, that the very exist- 
ence of religion should become unknown, in order that, 
presented to him a second time, it might act upon his 
heart, formed anew, with all the energy of a fresh fact, 
of an unexpected blessing. Vain wishes ! the eye 
which is destroyed can never be restored — and never 
can we restore faith, which is the eye of the soul. 
Strange condition of mind, in which one believes 



THE ENDLESS STUDY. 125 

everything, yet believes nothing ; in which the faith of 
the intellect enables us to feel the necessity of the faith 
of the heart, causes us to mourn its absence, but cannot 
give it to the soul ; a condition of light, but of light 
which has no other effect than to render darkness 
visible; ignorance in the midst of science, error in 
truth, unbelief in faith, a curse in the form of a bless- 
ing; situation, contradictory, insensate, in which we 
should reproach the divine power as a cruel mock- 
ery, if the evidence did not compel us to ascribe it to 
ourselves ! God is not the author of any evil ; he is 
the remedy of all evils ; and the cure of what we have 
just described is not beyond his power, is not beyond 
his goodness. 

Here, it seems to me, that I hear some one saying, 
but is it really nothing to know? Is not knowing 
the way to the truth ? Is it not a part of the 
truth ? 

Doubtless it is ; and were this the proper occa- 
sion, I should insist on the utility of that very knowl- 
edge, the insufficiency of which I have just exhibi- 
ted ; and for this very reason, that religion ought to be 
seized by the whole man. I should demand that the 
intellect should enter into it; and, considering the 
beautiful harmony of the evangelical system, its perfect 
consistency founded upon absolute and, by consequence, 
necessary truth, the accordance of that work of God 
with all the other works of the same hand, I would say, 
that if we wished to place man at the point of depart- 
ure of all just ideas, on the way of all practical truths, 
it is good to make him embrace the Christian religion 
on the sides which interest his reason ; a thing, per- 
haps, too much neglected, and which would form for 



126 vinet's miscellanies. 

the mass of society an instrument of mental develop- 
ment, not less than of moral culture. 

But ideas of Christianity are not Christianity; it 
ought, however, to be well remarked here, that if from 
Christianity, real and living, we re-descend, almost 
without willing it, to the ideas of which its system is 
composed, so also these ideas remount as naturally to 
life, which is its essence. Yet once more we remark, 
these are only ideas, ideas, I avow, relative to moral 
facts, moral ideas, and which, as such, cannot be ex- 
plained, but by some previous intervention of the mo- 
ral being, but which, nevertheless, do not necessarily 
move that last fountain of the soul, from which springs 
true life. In studying the phenomena of interior ex- 
istence, one is almost tempted to admit in man two 
concentric souls, of which the most exterior is only the 
counterproof or the reflection of the other; a super- 
ficial soul that remains a stranger to obligation, obedi- 
ence, and will, but which conceives of all these, which 
receives the communications of the true soul, possesses 
its secret, speaks its language, and, on the ground of 
that mutual understanding, gives and takes itself for a 
soul — although it is only the dim reflection of the soul 
in the understanding. Whatever may be the nature of 
that faculty, and the secret of its relations to life, we 
do not see in it the true seat of religious truth ; even 
though capable of admiring and painting the truth, it is 
not in a situation to experience and realize it. This 
second soul, doubtless, could not exist in the absence of 
the first ; moral ideas suppose in him who perceives 
them a moral nature, and one has some difficulty in 
conceiving why every idea does not bring along with it 
its corresponding sentiment ; but innumerable facts exist 



THE ENDLESS STUDY. 127 

to prove that these ideas, however moral they may be, 
are nothing but ideas, that they belong only to the do- 
main of the intellect, and that it is not in them we must 
seek for the source of life. Life belongs to that portion 
of our nature which obeys, which hopes and loves. 

I have spoken first of obeying, because the sentiment 
of obligation, the conscience, is the root of all morality. 
I have spoken of it first, because separation between 
God and man, having here for its principle the 
disobedience of man, the return of man to God or 
religion must commence by obedience ; religion, which 
names nothing else as its end, speaks of nothing else as 
its beginning. Conscience produces fear; fear dis- 
sipated by the free offer of salvation, gives place to joy ; 
joy opens the heart to love ; and love is life, love itself 
is salvation ; obedience, which ought to be the reason 
of our happiness, is become its effect and consequence. 
Such is the genealogy of evangelical sentiments and 
dispositions ; it shows us in what spirit we ought to 
receive the Gospel, and how we ought to appropriate it. 
It is with intellect and conscience together that we 
ought to read it. 

What can be more reasonable ; what more conformed 
to the nature of the Gospel, and the design which God 
has in view in giving it ? His design is to provide a 
remedy for the soul, a rule for the will. The Gospel, 
like all other facts, may furnish matter for a science ; 
but, before being a science, it is a fact, it is an action 
of God. That action, it is more important to submit 
to, than to explain. When a father confers a benefit 
upon his children, or when in the exercise of his 
paternal functions, he takes some step on their account, 
their duty, doubtless, is not to analyze psychologically 



128 vinet's miscellanies. 

the principles which cause him to act so, or the consis- 
tency of the means which he employs to accomplish 
his aim, but to receive it, and to feel it. A plant — sup- 
posing it endowed with reason — would not be fertilized 
by the knowledge which it might have of the origin of 
the effects of the rain, but by the rain itself. Before 
investigating the effects of grace, which is the rain 
from heaven, and which falls not in all places, man 
ought to run towards it, and steep himself in its influ- 
ence. Then only will the withered branches revive, 
and be covered with fruits. 

Then refreshed, fertilized, living, he may investigate, 
if he pleases ; and thus, doubtless, he will do with 
humility, with reverence, and in order to render honor 
to the source of life. His thought, impregnated with a 
balsam which prevents all corruption, will communicate 
grace with science. Then will fall to the ground, with 
the approbation of St. Paul himself, that word of his, 
' k Science puffeth up, charity buildeth up," because 
science itself has become charity. Then will St. Paul 
no longer say of you, that you are always learning, 
without coming to the knowledge of the truth, because 
you have known, so to speak, before learning; the 
great truth was in your heart, before the particular 
truths of speculation entered your intellect. Then 
these truths themselves will become living parts of 
" the truth ;" your theology of a piece with' the other, 
will be a religion ; your science entirely Christian ; 
your light, heat ; your sun, a true sun. In making such 
use of vour intellect as will honor you among the 
thinking, you will provoke no one to the idolatry of 
intellect ; your reason will suffice to point out the 
limits and insufficiency of reason ; as the bow holds the 



THE ENDLESS STUDY. 129 

arrow, each of your thoughts will hold a sentiment ; at 
once instructed and edified by you, all will rejoice so 
fully to comprehend what they love, and to love what 
they comprehend, and will bless Him who, in sending 
from heaven peace to our troubled hearts, has sent 
peace equally to our intellect. 

But all this will not be your work ; but the work of 
Him, whose grace addressed equally to intellect and 
heart, has shed upon them by turn light in the heat, 
and heat in the light. To him then I feel myself com- 
pelled to appeal, at the close of this abstract discussion, 
composed of the very speculations whose abuse I have 
condemned. No one, I hope, will have occasion to 
accuse me of inconsistency. In this case, all Christian 
preachers would have to be accused, who in presenting 
to you ideas (for they have nothing at their disposal but 
the ideas of things) extend their wishes, in your behalf, 
further than their power will go. The danger which I 
have, to-day, pointed out, I have met in this very dis- 
course. I have need then to pray God to moisten this 
arid soil, to vivify these reasonings, to realize these ideas ; 
to cause your heart to respond to each of the words, 
which I have addressed to your intellects. I raise to 
Him from the bosom of my infirmity, that prayer which 
will change it into power. If you pray yourselves, my 
desire will be accomplished in advance ; for one prays 
not with the intellect, but with the heart. May we, at 
the close of these speculations, find ourselves fortified in 
our aversion to sterile speculations ; be led to examine 
ourselves whether we have the truth in us, or only its 
form, whether we merely know or whether we live ! 
Whatever be the extent of our knowledge or the reach of 
our intellect, may we all have it in our power, with joy 

6* 



130 vinet's miscellanies. 

and gratitude, to appropriate these words of our Saviour : 
" I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and of 
earth, that thou hast hid these things from the wise and 
prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes !" O blessed 
childhood ; true maturity of the heart, true perfection 
of man, immutable age of the faithful on earth, eternal 
age of the blessed and of angels, mayst thou be given to 
all of us with thy simplicity, thy candor, and thy faith ! 



THE CENTRE OF MORAL GRAVITATION. 

OCCASIONED BY THE "PHILOSOPHICAL MISCELLANIES' 
OF M. JOUFFROY. 

(FROM "ESSAIS DE PHILOSOPH1E MORALE.") 



The two most remarkable pieces of this collection 
are those which have for their title " The Actual Con- 
dition of Humanity."* The first only has been known 
to us. When it appeared in the Globe, in 1826, we 
recollect how vividly it excited our curiosity, with ref- 
erence to the second article, which it led us to expect, 
but which did not appear. The author in the first part 
of his task, proposed to show the extreme probability, 
or rather philosophical necessity of the triumph of 
Christian civilization, which, in his view, must gradually 
absorb all other civilizations. First ascending to the 
cause of the difference which separates civilized from 
savage communities, M. Jouffroy found it to consist in 
the different degrees of precision, with which the ques- 
tion of religion was solved in these respective communi- 
ties. Thus the author indicated, on his way, a great 
truth, which was noticed, perhaps, only, by a small 
number of his readers : namely, that man is a religious 

* For a brief account of M. Jouffroy, and the pieces referred to, see 
Note at the end of this Essay. 



132 vinet's miscellanies. 

animal ; that is to say, that he is irresistibly impelled 
to subordinate every question to that of religion ; that, 
by an instinct, he finds all things good or bad, useful 
or injurious, according to their conformity or opposition 
to the law, which places in time the conditions of eter- 
nity ; that society cannot organize itself with security 
or hope except around some " Word of God ;" that the 
law can be nothing less than the will of God applied 
to social action ; in a word, that society itself, as well 
as the individual, is created in the manner and with 
the means appropriate to it, to perform the service of 
God. According to which, it is easy to comprehend, 
says our author, that as the solution of the religious 
question shall be more precise, (and we add, more true) 
the more will society find itself in harmony w T ith the 
designs of God, the fulfilment of which constitutes the 
order and beauty of the universe, the happiness of sen- 
sitive and intelligent beings. To the different degrees 
of religious truth must correspond with exactness, the 
different degrees of civilization, from the condition ab- 
solutely savage, which is only the lowest term of a con- 
tinued gradation, to the highest social perfection attain- 
able by man. The comparison of civilized nations 
with each other will present results perfectly analogous. 
The relative truth of the religious system will determine 
the superiority of the social system, while in its turn, 
the superiority of the social system and its capacity for 
extension, its conquering force, will bear testimony 
to the truth of the religious doctrines upon which it is 
based. But, the author, after having proved that " mis- 
sionaries cannot act upon communities already civil- 
ized except by the superiority of the truth of the Chris- 
tian system, that this superiority of truth is also a supe- 



THE CENTRE OF MORAL GRAVITATION. 133 

riority of power, and confers superiority of attraction ; 
after having announced that he had sought to ascertain, 
both by history and investigation, which of the systems 
is the truest," has, nevertheless, not attempted to prove 
except by results the superiority of the truth which he as- 
cribes to Christianity. His second article, very fine in 
other respects, and which would not have disappointed us, 
had not our attention been directed elsewhere, presents 
the development of very different ideas. Disappointed ! 
but why disappointed ? After all, we have not been dis- 
appointed. In studying, w T ith some care, this second 
article, we have found, if not the results that we sought, 
at least principles which involve or necessitate it. We 
proceed to explain ourselves. 

After comparing civilized with savage nations, and 
then civilized nations with each other, he ends by pla- 
cing himself at the centre of Christian civilization, and 
traces a parallel between the three European nations 
which, in his view, are the representatives of the differ- 
ent forms, and depositaries of the different forces of 
that civilization. He shows what the system they 
represent would gain by their union becoming more and 
more intimate ; he discovers what each of them would 
itself gain by this means, and endeavors to prove that 
to labor truly for the welfare of one nation, it must be 
done with reference to humanity as a whole ; for by 
virtue of that most admirable law, in the widest as well 
as in the narrowest sphere, the interest of all is identi- 
cal with the interest of each. 

Here we cannot withhold the remark that the inverse 
maxim lies at the basis of the systems which, in the 
present day, tend to predominate. It seems to be ad- 
mitted, in fact, that the interest of each is identical and 



134 vinet's miscellanies. 

harmonious with the interest of all, and that the first 
conducts to the second, as the second to the first. In 
an abstract point of view this is true, so that without 
inconvenience the terms of the proposition may be re- 
versed. If this identity exists (and how doubt it with- 
out denying God, enthroning chance, rejecting evi- 
dence?) it ought to be a matter of indifference, but 
always in an abstract sense, whether we begin at the 
one term or at the other. It is not, however, in an ab- 
stract but in a concrete sense that the individual acts, 
that is to say, in the sense of a given individuality, which 
is his own, and which is composed in part of an instinct 
of justice and sympathy, and in part of passions which 
struggle in opposition, and constitute the different forms 
of a greedy, all-grasping, all-devouring egoism.* Thence 
the identity exists no longer, the harmony is broken ; 
and it is easy to conceive how, if a single egoism dis- 
turbs order, a thousand egoisms in conflict not only with 
society but with themselves, will disturb it yet more, 
and so far from social good being the result, nothing but 
social evil can spring from their combined development. 
But social evil, in particular, can be nothing else than 
the evil of individuals, so that, by an inevitable reper- 
cussion, the misery of society falls back upon each of 
its authors. 

But a nation can be nothing more than an individual, 
when serving as a rule to itself. A nation is an indi- 
vidual, passionate, egoistical, unjust, which, in taking its 
interest for its only rule, compromises as well the inter- 
ests of humanity as its own. Reason ought to cause 
nations to ascend to humanity, as individuals to nations ; 
for the task given us is always to ascend to that which 

* Selfishness. 



THE CENTRE OF MORAL GRAVITATION. 135 

is found to be an interest which can never become ego- 
istical, (selfish,) and which on this ground becomes the 
summit and source of all other interests. This interest 
can be nothing but humanity. But two things may be 
understood by humanity : the mass of men which in- 
habit our globe, or the combination of the qualities which 
constitute the nature of man. In the first sense, the 
providential law already finds its application, for facts 
prove that the evil of one nation can never be the good 
of others, nor its good their evil. But these facts lead 
only to a very imperfect realization of the law ; whether 
it be that the practical consequence which we derive 
from it is of a negative character, and resolves itself 
into reciprocal offices of a prudential kind, or whether 
humanity in the first sense is really beyond the reach 
of individuals, and even of nations. It is in the second 
sense, then, that humanity can serve as an object to our 
efforts ; we are called to promote, each in his sphere, the 
interests of the human element, and to elevate ourselves 
from patriotism to humanity. But what is the human 
element? and consequently, what is humanity (huma- 
nisme) ? Is there in reality a human element ? When 
you have detached from the notion of man that of child, 
father, husband, citizen, the particular, the public man, 
what remains to the pure notion of man ? An indifferent 
substance, the primal and neutral matter of all our re- 
lations — a mere image of faculties and organs — which 
is not dumb, however, and which once drew from a 
people whose nationality had made it ferocious, a cry 
of enthusiasm, at the utterance of that fine sentiment : 
Homo sum, et nihil humani a me alienum puto, but 
which did not prevent that people, which will never 
prevent any people, making their national existence a 



136 vinet's miscellanies. 

perpetual blasphemy against humanity. We repeat it, 
a substantial reality is wanting to the mere notion of 
man. All the particular attributes with which the life 
of man can be invested, suppose a relation ; man, as 
man alone, has it not ; and the notion of humanity van- 
ishes from our hands the moment we imagine we have 
grasped it. If, then, there is nothing by which, in some 
way, it may substantiate itself, do not retain man sus- 
pended in the void, but let him fall back towards the 
various relations which we have just named, at the risk 
of seeing him make of each of these relations a basis of 
an egoism. We must abandon our attempt to find in 
the idea of humanity that last step* from which a relation 
may embrace and control all others, that unity where 
all interests, co-ordinated like a pyramid, become, at 
their apex, one indivisible interest. But we shall not 
be disappointed in this respect, if we find for man a re- 
lation not parallel but superior to all which are formed 
on earth, that is, if we make it terminate with God, by 
means of the most elevated parts of our being. Then 
man finding a relation finds a reality ; then the pure 
notion of man has a substance ; then man, so far as he 
is man, is a reality ; then he has a human interest, which 
is determined by the relation of man to God ; then have 
we found a centre for all our interests, a summit to the 
pyramid of human relations, a point whence his entire 
moral life may issue and expand. It were impossible 
for us to feel ourselves under an absolute obligation to 
humanity, a mere abstract being from whom we receive 
nothing. But we are under obligation, in a manner the 
most absolute, to God, who is our origin and our end. 
There our egoism expires, there we cease to belong to 

* Echelon, round of the ladder or pyramid. 



THE CENTRE OF MORAL GRAVITATION. 137 

ourselves ; there we are at the disposal of God, and of 
all the objects which he indicates to our devotion. 
Eternal interest, the interest of God, if I may thus ex- 
press myself, is alone large enough to hold all other in- 
terests in free and generous play. Whatever is right 
finds its place in the service of God ; for whatever is 
right is God himself; egoism (selfishness) alone, individ- 
ual or rational, can find no place there, for egoism is 
the antagonism of that pure devotion, that disinterested 
love which we owe to God. No interest can be cultiva- 
ted at the expense of another, for God, who is the good 
of all, cannot contain in himself the evil of any. God 
is then the social principle par excellence, which we 
were to seek after by ascending higher and higher. 

But the mere idea of God, an idea exposed among 
men to so many corruptions, is not sufficient to secure 
our devotion to him. God must discover himself to us, 
in an authentic form, and with a character fitted to in- 
spire disinterested affection. 

It is in this last feature that M. JouffVoy will discover 
the superiority of the truth which he has foreseen in 
Christianity ; he will find here more than he sought — ■ 
auctius et melius. For in a moral and social point of 
view, and according to the principles he has himself 
laid down, he must acknowledge that Christianity has 
absolute truth. If religion, in order to be social, ought 
to teach and to inspire pure benevolence, what religion 
in this respect can compare with Christianity, which for 
the sake of teaching man to devote himself to God, has 
first devoted God to man ? I ask the author whether, 
in reasoning consistently upon the principles he has 
chosen, he is not irresistibly bound to recognize Chris- 
tianity as true ? What other doctrine can be more, or 



138 vinet's miscellanies. 

do more ? Can you conceive of one which could show 
us more than God incarnate, God upon the Ceoss ? # 

It is in this way that M. Jouffroy, perhaps, might 
have demonstrated the absolute truth of Christianity, 
if he had given himself to the investigation which his 
first article seemed to promise ; and we repeat it, we 
cannot see how he could logically arrive at any other 
conclusion. For ourselves, the positions of the second 
article on the true social theory, which places society 
at the centre, and the individual at the circumference, 
has made the Christian solution an inevitable necessity. 
From whatever point we start, provided we advance in 
good faith, we must terminate in the great evangelical 
synthesis. f 

Taken in itself, the second article of M. Jouffroy is 
a beautiful and noble composition, fruitful of conse- 
quences. We have ascended, at once, to the principle 
which governs the theory of the author, and which ex- 
plains and justifies it ; let us now change the route, and, 
forgetting the heights to which that theory attaches it- 
self, let us inquire only to what consequences it leads. 

In the manner of Copernicus, the author has removed 
the individual from the centre, where he illumines 
nothing, directs nothing, does nothing — towards the 
circumference, where he must gravitate. Humanity 

* If Jesus Christ is " God manifest in the flesh," there can be no error, 
no extravagance in representing God upon the cross. Whatever of mys- 
tery may be involved in this, it discovers to us the disinterested and 
amazing love of God. — T. 

f That is, the Gospel, by reuniting man to God, alone makes religion 
and morality, including disinterested love, purity and virtue, possible. 
That unites all extremes, reconciles all contradictions, mental, moral, and 
Bocial. That first binds men to God, and then binds men to one another. 
A sublime " Christian synthesis" indeed ! — T. 



THE CENTRE OF MORAL GRAVITATION. 139 

now occupies the centre ; humanity, I say, represented 
in each country by a particular society which must 
serve for humanity. Divisions into families and nations 
represent only grand divisions of labor, in a sublime 
spirit and aim. If this be so, then many changes will fol- 
low, for whoever serves must command, and whoever 
commands must serve. Society is no longer the instru- 
ment of the individual, but the individual is the instru- 
ment of society. Society no longer exists for man, but 
man for society. It will however be asked, is all this 
new ; is it not what we have a thousand times anticipat- 
ed ? We reply : this has been said sometimes, by a sort 
of contradiction ; for example, among the ancient re- 
publics, where the individual, by uniting his egoism with 
thousands of others, and transferring his own personal- 
ity to the personality of the nation, has attached the 
greatest part of his personal interest and happiness to 
the triumphs, however unjust, of the association of 
which he formed a part; so that the patriotism of 
Athens and Rome was a mere bargain in which the 
soul gave its share of individual welfare for a share 
in the national glory and prosperity. And this is only 
saying that, in the great majority of cases, they were 
without disinterestedness ; for sacrifices were required 
only as an equitable bounty for benefits rendered by 
society, as a moral tax, without which society could not 
meet the public expense. The same thing is still said, 
in our day, with little intelligence, when the masses are 
invited to devote themselves in the name of themselves, 
that is, in the name of nothing, without the principle 
of love, and with no relation to anything but them- 
selves, always rushing onward, but never rising up- 
ward. Christianity alone thoroughly comprehends 



140 vixet's miscellanies. 

what it says, when it commands devotion (self-conse- 
cration,) it alone knows disinterested love ; in the first 
place, because such pure devotion is doctrinally at its 
basis, and secondly, because, by giving the full assur- 
ance of happiness, and in that assurance itself the very 
happiness which it secures, by bestowing the recom- 
pense before the devotion, the salary before the labor, 
it puts the soul in a condition to devote itself without 
reserve, without hope, and without pledge ; makes of 
devotion the recompense of devotion, of sacrifice a part 
of the happiness it confers.* 

The doctrine of M. Joufiroy, who makes humanity 
the end and aim of individuals and nations, is thus new, 
if taken beyond the limits of Christian inspirations; 
and when he complains that it is not made the basis of 
politics, and the guide of political men, he but com- 
plains, to say the truth, that political men are not 
Christians ! When governments shall be Christian, 
then we shall see them laboring in the direction of the 
general interests of humanity. But if you could suc- 
ceed, even now, in convincing them by facts, that the 
interest of their communities engages them to labor 
thus, it would be no more in their power to do so, than 
it is in the power of a selfish individual to regulate all 
his conduct with reference to the interests of his fellow- 
men, when he is assured beforehand that they will end, 
by taking from him all the profit. Love alone teaches 

* God gives himself, first of all, for man and to man. The instant, 
therefore, man believes, he is forgiven and saved. He is fully jus- 
tified, and put in possession of eternal life. All that he has to do is to 
consecrate himself to God and to duty. By losing himself, he finds God, 
and in finding God, once more finds himself, nay, finds everything. " All 
is yours." Thus devotion, or sacrifice itself, is our highest interest and 
felicity. 



THE CENTRE OF MORAL GRAVITATION. 141 

devotion; and we are satisfied that general interests 
must be poorly guaranteed by the calculations of indi- 
vidual selfishness. 

And what is admirable, in this theory realized, par- 
ticular interests would be better secured the less they 
were thought of! The social welfare comprehends all 
other welfare, the human interests all other interests. 
In an order of things founded upon this principle, it 
would come to pass that little would be said of rights, 
much of duties ; nevertheless no right would suffer. 
Liberty would then be cultivated in connection with 
the entire social interest, and under the influence of 
religious principle. Society would be restored to its 
primitive integrity ; it would permit no one to be a 
slave : liberty, in its view, would be a force and a dig- 
nity, of which it would not suffer itself to be despoiled 
in the person of any of its members. A social state, 
founded upon the principle of disinterestedness, could 
not be other than free and happy. 

To the idea of liberty would attach itself (a thing 
equally new !) the idea of peace. Till the present time 
this has never been so. In too many cases, liberty is 
compelled to be nothing but an egoism, which defends it- 
self or attacks others. Its character, altogether nega- 
tive, puts it out of its power to create anything, to bind 
anything together. Not being love, it is nothing. 
Jealousy and hostility superabound in the political 
movements which pass under our eyes ; defiance is the 
avowed principle of modern constitutions.* With 
such elements as these, what can be constituted which 
is either solid or vital? They dissolve, they do not 

* No one needs to be told how this has been verified in the recent 
history of political movements in modern Continental Em-ope, 



142 vinet's miscellanies. 

unite. A true society must have confidence for its ba- 
sis, which is in the human sphere, what faith is in the 
religious sphere. And it is impossible that such confi- 
dence should establish itself, and control all the energies 
of society, till society has been wholly plunged in the 
waters of a new baptism. In a word, before society 
can be taught devotion, it must be Christian. Each 
person, in view of the incessant agitations of modern 
society, asks, when will they cease ; each longs to as- 
sign them some limit ; but no one sees distinctly any 
reason why such agitation should end. Political unrest 
in the elements which diffuse a general distrust, is " the 
worm that never dies, the fire that is never quenched ;" 
for when will selfishness find repose ? There is no 
hope, except in the intervention of a harmonizing syn- 
thesis, to speak the language of the new doctrines. 
This is felt. After all, to what good does it come, in 
this the nineteenth century, and in crowded Paris, in 
quest of new religions ?* It is absurd, doubtless, to 
think of making one. It would be like giving oneself 
an alms out of his own purse. It is absurd, we say, to 
think of making one, but it is infinitely reasonable to 
look for one. Has this symptom of our times been 
sufficiently studied ? 

What yet remains to us of the ancient faith, keeps to- 
gether crumbling societies. The Christian impulse has 
perpetuated itself among doctrines which contradict it. 
The Christian spirit still appears in many works of 

* In France, formalism, deism, scepticism, atheism, St. Simonism, 
Fourierisrn, sentimentalism, pan-religionism, which is simply pan-natu- 
ralism, and a thousand other isms, follow thick and fast at each other's 
heels. Strange that the " wise mei? of that infatuated country never 
seem to think of returning to pure Christianity. — T. 



THE CENTRE OF MORAL GRAVITATION. 143 

modern philosophy. It perpetuates, without avowing 
it, evangelical charity. At the same time, responding 
to the cry of human want, Christianity everywhere re- 
appears, fresh and beautiful, like the green earth, after a 
long winter. The thirst for the " glad tidings" is felt 
among those who do not know that there are " glad 
tidings."* The Christianity of the apostles and martyrs, 
not of philosophers and free-thinkers, the Christianity 
which Huss preached four centuries ago, and the apostle 
Paul eighteen centuries ago, rises again from the cata- 
combs of oblivion, and, ancient as it is, it appears, 
young and fresh, among the antiquities of yesterday and 
the day before. It stands prepared, at the close of a 
combat which perhaps may be long, to receive into its 
arms society, mangled and bleeding. The whole world 
joins itself to the one half of our question; for the 
whole world feels that aid is needed. Ask the philoso- 
phers ; they acknowledge that it is necessary, at any 
risk, to issue from negations, and enter the sphere of 
affirmative truths, as alone fruitful. But where are 
they, except in Christianity? We say, then, in the 
name of society, to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, 
" Our Father, who art in heaven, thy kingdom come !" 
May the author of the Philosophical Miscellanies offer 
the same prayer ! ' 

* Socialism, which pervades France and even Germany, is one of the 
most striking facts of modern times. Preposterous perhaps, as a system, 
it yet embodies one grand element of truth. It is the instinct and long- 
ing of the soul for unity, fraternity, and repose. This is its vitality and 
power. This accounts for its existence and will perpetuate it, in spite 
of oppression and contempt. Christianity alone understands this instinct. 
The gospel alone fairly meets and satisfies its demands. — T. 



144 VINET S MISCELLANIES- 



NOTICE OF JOUFFROY. 

BY THE TRANSLATOR. 

M. Theodore Jouffroy, one of the most able and elo- 
quent of the French philosophers of the eclectic school, 
was born in 1796, and studied under Cousin, who re- 
garded him with affection and admiration, as one of his 
most promising pupils. Soon after the completion of his 
studies, he was appointed professor of Moral Philosophy 
in the faculty of Literature, in which situation he con- 
tinued till his death, which occurred a few years ago. 
He bestowed much attention upon the Scottish philoso- 
phy, and gave to the French public an admirable trans- 
lation of Dugald Stewart's " Moral Philosophy," to 
which he prefixed an acute and elegant essay, on the 
study of intellectual philosophy. Less bold and hazar- 
dous than some of the French and German contempo- 
rary philosophers, and leaning to the Scottish method, 
which is simply the method of induction applied to the 
facts of consciousness, Jouffroy protests, with great 
earnestness, against too rapid generalizations, and mere 
theories, in the domain of philosophy. He is no mate- 
rialist, but clearly and beautifully develops the great 
facts of our spiritual and moral nature. Inferior, it 
may be, to Cousin, in the grasp of his mind, or the splen- 
dor of his style, he equals that able, but somewhat 
extravagant thinker, in the acuteness of his analysis, 
and in the beauty, clearness, and precision of his lan- 
guage. His attention, however, was directed chiefly to 
moral philosophy. His views on the nature and destiny 
of man, are grand and thrilling. These are developed, 



NOTICE OF JOUFFROY. 145 

to some extent, in his "Melanges Philosophiques," 
several of which have been well translated by Mr. 
George Ripley.* In his view, the fundamental question 
in ethics is, " Whether there be such a thing as good, 
and such a thing as evil." Having decided this ques- 
tion in the affirmative, by reference to the entire history 
of man, and the clearest facts of consciousness, he pro- 
ceeds to show, by an elaborate induction, that good and 
evil have reference to the destiny of the individual and 
of the race ; that good is what promotes, evil what hin- 
ders the fulfilment of our destiny. On this ground he 
proves, that the great problem of human destiny lies at 
the foundation of all morality. What is man ? Whence 
comes he, and whither goes he ? He has wants ; evil 
presses upon him ; he has many doubts and fears ; great 
and thrilling questions, pertaining to his past and his 
future, press upon his attention. What is the individ- 
ual man? What is the race? What is its origin? 
What its end? Why does it suffer? Why does it 
sin ?f Can it be restored to purity and happiness ? In 
a word, what is its destiny? 

These questions, poetry, religion, and philosophy en- 
deavor to solve. They have done so with more or less 
success. The solution given by the Christian religion 
seems to M. Jouffroy satisfactory, if we do not misun- 
derstand him ; but the solution, in this instance, is sim- 
ply practical, not scientific or philosophical, but clothed 
in poetical and symbolic forms. Philosophy must still in- 

* Most of the Miscellanies first appeared in the Globe, a philosophi- 
cal Journal published in Paris. 

f M. Jouffroy does not use the word sin, but he must certainly mean 
it when he speaks of moral evil. But sin is a very expressive word of 
which the philosophers seem to be somewhat afraid. 

7 



146 vinet's miscellanies. 

vestigate and verify, on fundamental grounds, the prin- 
ciples of religion. How far M. Jouffroy concedes the 
inspiration and authority of the Christian religion, it 
may be difficult to say. He uniformly speaks of it with 
respect, and certainly vindicates its claims to high con- 
sideration, by his speculations on the Christian form of 
civilization. We fear, however, that he did not regard it 
as containing absolute, authoritative, and infallible truth. 
This he sought in the sphere of speculative philosophy. 
Did he find it there ? What light has he thrown on the 
origin and destiny of man ? How does he account for 
sin ; how propose to remove it ? In a word, does he 
solve philosophically the sublime problems he has him- 
self raised? Every candid reader must say that he 
does not. Upon some points of inquhy, touching the 
true method of philosophical study, the nature of moral 
distinctions, and the history of the race, the tendencies 
of the various forms of civilization, the rights and inter- 
ests of individuals and of nations, he sheds some clear 
light ; but as to the solution of the grand and difficult 
problems referred to, he has left them very much where 
he found them. Is sin accounted for, by referring it to 
ignorance, or inexperience, or example? Can man, 
either as a race or as an individual, be restored to purity 
and happiness, by ceasing to think of himself, in other 
words, by abandoning his egoism, and living for man 
as man, for the nation, for the world ? Nay, can man 
be induced, by any means short of a divine regenera- 
tion, to become disinterested and self-sacrificing ? Can 
you transform him, by an abstraction which you call 
humanity, or the race ? Can a corrupted individual, 
or a corrupted society, like France, for example, amid 
the convulsions of revolution, secure liberty, equality, 



NOTICE OF JOUFFROY. 147 

fraternity, by simply willing it, above all by fighting for 
it ? The truth is, the great body of the French and 
German philosophers, as events demonstrate, have not 
yet taken the first step in the solution of the problem of 
human renovation ; and the reason is to be found in the 
fact, that they have either rejected Christianity, or sub- 
jected it to the control of speculative theories. 

M. Jouffroy's principles, however, as shown by Vinet, 
logically carried out, resolve themselves into the 
Christian solution, which gives to man a God — not a 
God abstract or metaphysical, but real, vital, warm; 
and not merely a God, but a Father, a friend, a redeem- 
er, whose love, " shed abroad in the heart by the Holy 
Ghost," produces a corresponding love, and thus reno- 
vates and saves him. Thence flows true and disinter- 
ested virtue, love to God and love to man, that " charity 
divine" which " believeth all things, hopeth all things, 
endureth all things," and, we may add, " doeth all things." 
God himself has taught the august, though simple lesson 
of " overcoming evil with good," of living for Him, for 
ourselves, for one another, for the world ; and thus the 
problem of human destiny is solved, and solved for all 
time to come. 

As logically necessitating such a result, M. Jouffroy's 
disquisitions on the " Actual Condition of Humanity," 
possess a peculiar interest. In the first, he shows, that 
there are " three systems of civilization, which have 
founded three great families which divide the globe ; 
and that these three systems of civilization are, in other 
words, three different religions or philosophies, the 
Christian, the Mohammedan, and the Braminic." 

He adds, " We ought not to be surprised at this. A 
real religion is nothing but a complete solution of the 



148 vinet's miscellanies. 

great questions which interest humanity, that is to say, 
of the destiny of man, of his origin, of his future condi- 
tion, of his relations to God and his fellow-men. Now, 
it is by virtue of the opinions which different nations 
profess on these questions, that they establish a mode 
of worship, a government, and laws, that they adopt 
certain manners, habits, and thoughts, that they aspire 
to a certain order of things, which they regard as the 
ideal of the true, the beautiful, the right, and the good, 
in this world/'* 

Hence every religion necessitates and involves a cer- 
tain political organization, a certain mode of social 
life, and a certain moral or attractive force. 

Thus Mohammedanism, Braminism, and Christianity, 
are clearly distinguished, and give rise to different spe- 
cific results, visible wherever they exist and have full 
scope. Varieties obtain in these several spheres, but 
they have certain grand characteristic features by 
which they are distinguished. 

" The true and radical difference between savages 
and civilized nations, consists in the fact, that the for- 
mer have only crude and vague ideas on the great ques- 
tions which interest humanity. Hence savages, all 
over the world, are devoted to Fetichism in religion, 
that is to say, they have not yet discovered the idea 
of that of which they have the feeling, but not the con- 
ception." This accounts for their weakness, politically 
and socially, and necessitates the fact, everywhere oc- 
curring, that they are destined to absorption into the 
stronger civilizations. 

The world, then, is subject to three different forces, 
or three systems of civilization — Christianity, Bramin- 
* Ripley's Translation. 



NOTICE OF JOUFFROY. 149 

ism, and Mohammedanism. The savage race is every- 
day diminishing ; one or all of the other races every- 
where — in Asia, Africa, and America, by conversion, 
by conquest, by general superiority of character and 
force, must overrun them, take their place, or draw 
them into their ranks. 

But of the three forms of civilization dominant in the 
world, Christianity alone is vital, active, aggressive. 
It is the only one which makes any progress at the ex- 
pense of the others. The other two, once active and 
powerful, have exhausted their energy. They are sta- 
tionary, make no progress, gain no converts, achieve 
no conquests. Neither Braminism nor Mohammedan- 
ism forms colonies, gains anything by science, by re- 
ligion, or the arts. Indeed, they are losing, by these 
very means, every day. They exist by sufferance ; a 
few powerful strokes from the stronger civilization 
would dash them to pieces. They gain nothing upon 
savage nations. All these are falling, under the power 
of the Christian civilization. On no side do they pene- 
trate into the Christian civilization ; that, however, 
everywhere penetrates into them, and plants the Bible, 
Christianity, civil institutions, arts and sciences, in their 
very centre. " Christianity and its civilization every- 
where advance, with ardor and with deliberate purpose, 
into the domains of Brama and Mohammed." 

The superiority of power, then, mental, moral, social, 
scientific, and physical, belongs to Christianity. Thus 
it advances, in every possible way, and must, eventu- 
ally, plant itself on the high places of the world, and 
take possession of the nations. 

Christianity itself is pure, but penetrating the life of 
man and the life of the nations, as a social power, it 



150 vinet's miscellanies. 

gives energy and impulse to all that is strongest in 
man ; and as good and evil are mixed in the history and 
experience of the race, the evil is evolved with the 
good. But the good, by the blessing of Heaven, is des- 
tined to predominate; and although revolutions and 
conquests are to be dreaded in themselves, they prepare 
the way for the triumph of the Christian civilization. 

In the second disquisition, or rather the second 
part of his disquisition, on the "Actual Condition 
of Humanity," M. Jouffroy recapitulates the princi- 
ples established in the first, and proceeds to consider 
France, England and Germany, including the United 
States, as the three great representatives of Christian 
civilization — " the only ones which invent," which are 
" truly enlightened," which make progress in science, 
in the arts, in industry, in the accumulation of wealth, 
in Christian proselytism and in conquest. Of course 
Russia, though behind them, in civilization, is not left 
out of the account. For her progress, such as it is, is 
quite considerable, and based in its last analysis, upon 
the Christian idea. He shows that each of these has 
its peculiar sphere and destiny, and that their true inte- 
rest, as well as the welfare of the world, demand their 
union and co-operation. 

Hence he infers that the most momentous question 
which philosophy can propose is that of the future con- 
dition of our civilization. He then complains of the 
neglect of this great problem by statesmen and rulers, 
shows, with a deep and stirring eloquence, that the end 
of man is not animal but moral ; and that it becomes 
all to arouse themselves, and labor, not for narrow, local, 
or selfish ends, but for the good of the whole, for man- 
kind, for the world. " We confess," says he in closing, 



NOTICE OF JOUFFROY. 151 

" it is particularly as philosophers that we have been 
led to the examination of this great problem. Per- 
suaded of the truth of the conjectures on the prospects 
of Christian civilization, which have been suggested by 
a view of the world, beholding in the destiny of this 
civilization that of the human race, this interest pre- 
dominates in our mind, over all others ; so much the 
more, as, so far from excluding, it embraces and com- 
prehends them. We have also been led to this inquiry 
by another interest, which belongs more especially to 
our philosophical studies. It is the wish to call forth a 
philosophy of history on a broader scale, than has yet ap- 
peared among us. It seems to us, that hitherto, we 
have given our attention too exclusively to nations, and 
not enough to humanity, too much to institutions, re- 
ligions, and manners, and not enough to the develop- 
ment of the human mind, which is the secret principle 
of manners, religions, and institutions. The former 
method has concealed the progress of civilization itself, 
of which only isolated fragments are found in the civil- 
ization of each nation. For the civilization of one nation 
is not civilization ; civilization itself is the succession of 
different degrees of civilization ; and in order to compre- 
hend its progress, we must understand the origin, the con- 
nection and the development of these different degrees. 
The second method has left in the shade the very prin- 
ciple of civilization, which is something more profound 
than institutions, than all external facts ; for all things 
of this kind die and succeed each other, while civiliza- 
tion never dies. This principle which we have illus- 
trated connects together all institutions, all religions, 
all diversities of manners, all forms of humanity, and re- 
duces them to being mere events in history. This es- 



152 vinet's miscellanies. 

sentially simplifies the history of humanity, and gives 
it a physiognomy, a unity, and a charm altogether 
new."* 

It is a matter of regret, that M. Jouffroy did not di- 
rect his attention to the fact of the great diversities of 
character, power, and progress among the different 
nations, which are included in the Christian civiliza- 
tion, and that he did not give the rationale of the vast 
superiority of the protestant element.f None can deny 
that the Anglo-Saxon race, including the free protes- 
tant communities, are gradually gaining upon the others 
in stability, freedom, and attractive force, and that the 
high probability now is that they are yet to control the 
world. They now possess and control, with slight ex- 
ceptions, the whole western hemisphere. They occupy 
the centre of the eastern, and wield the greatest com- 
mercial and social influence in Europe. 

Above all, how mournful the fact, that Jouffroy ac- 
tually stops short at the very threshold of his own 
mighty problem. For the question yet recurs, if Chris- 
tianity be the strongest power in the world, what is its 
fundamental principle ? Is it divine, is it capable of 
universal and permanent application ? In a word, is it 
life to the individual, is it life to the race ? If it be such, 
then is it true, infallibly and eternally true. For the 
solution, which Jouffroy left untouched, we refer our 
readers to Vinet's brief but suggestive essay. 

* Ripley's Translation. 

f As a Frenchman, perhaps this was impossible. The national vanity 
of nearly all French writers, inordinate even in Cousin and other philo- 
sophic thinkers, blinds them to the real character of their countrymen, 
the defects of which are obvious to the world. 



THE EELIGIONS OF MAN AND THE RELIGION 
OF GOD. 

"Tilings which have not entered into the heart of man."— 1 Cor. ii. 9. 



Man has separated himself from God. The storms 
of passion have broken the mysterious cable which held 
the vessel in port. Shaken to its base, and feeling it- 
self driven upon unknown seas, it seeks to rebind itself 
to the shore ; it endeavors to renew its broken strands ; 
it makes a desperate effort to re-establish those connec- 
tions, without which it can have neither peace nor se- 
curity. In the midst of his greatest wanderings, man 
never loses the idea of his origin and destiny ; a dim 
recollection of his ancient harmony pursues and agitates 
him; and without renouncing his passions, without 
ceasing to love sin, he longs to re-attach his being, full 
of darkness and misery, to something luminous and 
peaceful, his fleeting life to something immovable and 
eternal. In a word, God has never ceased to be the 
want of the human race. Alas ! their homage wanders 
from its proper object, their worship becomes depraved, 
their piety itself is impious ; the religions which cover 
the earth are an insult to the unknown God, who is their 
object. But in the midst of these monstrous aberra- 
tions, a sublime instinct is revealed ; and each of these 



154 vinet's miscellanies. 

false religions is a painful cry of the soul, torn from its 
centre and separated from its object. It is a despoiled 
existence, which, in seeking to clothe itself, seizes upon 
the first rags it finds ; it is a disordered spirit, which, 
in the ardor of its thirst, plunges, all panting, into fetid 
and troubled waters ; it is an exile, who, in seeking the 
road to his native land, buries himself in frightful des- 
erts. 

From the brutal savage, who kisses the dust from the 
feet of some hideous idol, to the magi of the East, ador- 
ing in the sun the immortal soul of nature, and the prin- 
ciple of all existence, from the primitive people who 
offer to him the first fruits of their harvests, to those un- 
happy nations who think to render him homage by the 
most shameful excesses, the religious principle every- 
where makes itself known. Man cannot renounce 
either his sins or God ; his corruption chains him to this 
world, a mysterious instinct impels him towards that 
which is invisible. Between these two opposing forces 
he makes no choice ; he attempts to reconcile two in- 
compatible elements ; he mingles his morals with his 
devotion ; he makes gods resembling himself, in order 
to offer them a worship analogous to his own evil 
thoughts ; he erects even his vices into divinities ; his 
religion becomes the faithful mirror of his natural cor- 
ruption ; in a word, he degrades the idea of the Divin- 
ity, but he cannot do without it ; and he prefers infamous 
gods rather than adore nothing. 

But what do all these different religions procure for 
him? Nothing but a torment added to all his other 
torments ; a painful, humiliating subjection ; frequently 
the necessity to do violence to the most cherished feel- 
ings of his nature ; no solid hope ; no internal repose ; 



THE RELIGIONS OF MAN AND OF GOD. 155 

no moral perfection ; such is the value of that mysterious 
instinct, a species of importunate craving which he can 
neither stifle nor satisfy. So that he who looks upon 
religion in the various terrestrial forms with which it has 
clothed itself, might say, with an appearance of reason, 
that it is one of the greatest evils which nature has in- 
flicted on humanity. 

These fabulous creeds, it is true, disappear before 
Christianity ; for the least effect of that august religion, 
is to produce a disgust with all others. No new wor- 
ship will establish itself on the earth; the field of inven- 
tion in the matter of positive religions is irrevocably en- 
closed. But in the shadow of Christianity, and in the 
very bosom of the church itself, there flourish certain 
religions, without a history, without form and name, 
which, to many persons, take the place of Christianity. 
These religions, which owe more to it than their vota- 
ries imagine, are nothing more than an effort of the dif- 
ferent faculties of the soul, of their own accord, to put 
themselves in communication with the Deity. It is the 
imagination, the sentiment, the reason and the con- 
science, seeking together, or each by itself, to satisfy the 
longing they have for God. And it is worthy of remark, 
that these different religions are particularly those of 
cultivated minds, who wish to find a neutral ground be- 
tween Christianity, which appears to them too simple 
and unintellectual, and atheism, by which they are ap- 
palled. But let us inquire if these religions are better 
fitted than gross paganism to satisfy the various wants 
of the human soul. 

What, in reference to religion, are the wants of man ? 
He is ignorant of divine things ; he needs a religion to 
enlighten him. He is unhappy from the evils of this 



156 vinet's miscellanies. 

life, and the uncertainty of his future destiny : he needs 
a religion to console him. In fine, he is a sinner ; he 
needs a religion to regenerate him. Let us seek these 
various characteristics in the four religions of the ima- 
gination, the intellect, the sentiment, and the conscience. 

To some, the Deity is revealed only in that which is 
fitted to strike the imagination. It is not the essence 
of the Being of beings, his moral character, or his will, 
which chiefly occupies their attention, but that part of his 
being by means of which he is rendered, in some meas- 
ure, visible to our eyes. It is the universe,that is to say, 
time, space, forms, in which are reflected his eternity, 
his greatness, and his power. If the spectacles of na- 
ture in themselves are grand and sublime, how much 
are they elevated by the idea of that Word which called 
from nothing all their magnificence ; of that Intelligence 
which presides over all its mighty movements, which 
encloses as many wonders in the worm that dies under 
our feet, as in the formation and government of suns ! 
What charm and what beauty are added to the splendor 
of the starry heavens, to the savage harmony of the ra- 
ging seas, to the smiling landscape of fields and woods 
under the beams of the morning sun, by the thought of 
the universal Spirit which silently circulates through 
all beings, and which seems to reveal its immortal ex- 
istence, and utter its voice divine, amid all the motions 
and all the sounds of the universe ! So that, frequently, 
man, absorbed in the contemplation of these wonders, 
unites himself, by his enthusiasm, to the concert of the 
creation ; his imagination feasts on the idea of God, and 
he believes himself to possess religion. 

The imagination, the reason, the sensibility, the con- 
science, however, are four altars set up, between which 



THE RELIGIONS OF MAN AND OF GOD. 157 

the sacred flame is divided ; but imagination is not the 
whole of man ; it is not, by far, his best part. When 
the imagination has been excited in this way, is man 
any more like God ? Is he more worthy of God ? And 
not to go even so far, has he more of peace or consola- 
tion ? No ! the charm is evanescent ; from those 
heights to which imagination raises him, man falls back 
upon himself, and finds not God there ; and the august 
spectacles in which he has mingled, only make him feel 
the enormous disproportion between the universe so full 
of God, and his soul so void of God. 

Others, in smaller number, seek to bring themselves 
into union with the Divinity by intelligence. To ana- 
lyze the divine attributes, to harmonize them, to explain 
the connection of the Creator with the creation ; in a 
word, to form, with reference to God and divine things, 
a body of systematic doctrine, is the task they impose 
upon themselves ; and such labors, it must be confessed, 
are a noble exercise of thought. But a principal defect 
of this form of religion is, that it is less a religion than 
a study. Ordinarily the man who stops here seeks less 
to satisfy a want of his heart than a curiosity of his 
mind. Abstracted from himself, isolating himself from 
the things he contemplates, in order the better to contem- 
plate them, application, practice, his personal relations 
to these high truths, occupy his attention but feebly ; 
he acquires some additional ideas, but these ideas pro- 
duce in him neither emotion nor change. And, indeed, 
how can he be changed by the things which always 
remain uncertain to his mind ? The field of religious 
ideas, when it is trodden by the foot of natural reason, 
is only one of problems and contradictions. The far- 
ther one advances, the more his darkness increases ; 



158 vinet's miscellanies. 

and he ends by losing even those primary notions and 
instinctive beliefs which he possessed before he entered 
it. This is the experience of all the systems of all the 
schools in every age of the world. The history of phi- 
losophy teaches us that these investigations, whenever 
eagerly and incautiously pursued, lead to the most ter- 
rible doubts, to the very borders of the abyss. It is 
there, face to face with the infinite, the philosopher sees 
realities dissolve, certainties the most universal vanish, 
his own personality become a problem ! There he sees 
world and thought, observation and observer, man and 
God, swallowed up and lost, before his terrified vision, 
in the boundless immensity of a horrible chaos ! It is 
there that, seized with a mysterious dread, he asks back, 
with anxious emotion, the world of finite beings and in- 
telligible ideas, which he wishes he had never abandoned. 
Thus his religion, all thought, neither enlightens, con- 
verts, nor consoles him ; and he finds himself as far 
removed from his aim as before his laborious investiga- 
tions.* 

* That speculative philosophy has been a fruitful source of scepticism 
and irreligion, no one at all acquainted -with its history will deny. The 
class of philosophers of whom Benedict Spinoza and G. W. F. Hegel are 
fair representatives, have generally rejected the Christian faith, and not 
only so, but the existence of a personal God, and the immortality of the 
soul. Nor is this a matter of surprise ; for they transcend the boundaries 
of all fair and legitimate inquiry. Contemning the slow and laborious 
investigation of facts and evidence, as empirical and shallow, and specu- 
lating fearlessly upon 

" Fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute," 

they lose themselves in the untried and desolate regions which He beyond 
the limits of human inquiry. 'Now they seem to make everything mat- 
ter ; then they seem to make everything mind : anon they talk learnedly 
of " the whole," as if nature were God, and God nature, without anv dis- 



THE RELIGIONS OF MAN AND OF GOD. 159 

Feeling this, many persons reject these idle specula- 
tions and acknowledge no religion but that of sentiment. 
This, they say, is good ; and certainly, all religion that 
proceeds not from the heart is sterile and vain. Let us, 
however, examine. We are speaking of a religion of 
sentiment. Without doubt this sentiment is love, and 
a love which has God for its object : in which case it 
must be acknowledged that the best kind of religion is 
also the rarest, or that the love spoken of is a feeling 

tinction, except that which exists between the absolute and relative, the 
real and phenomenal. Occasionally they appear to admit the existence 
of an independent and personal God, at other times to deny it altogether. 
They spurn the common, and especially the Christian notion of a supreme 
Jehovah, distinct from and superior to all the works of the creation, and 
adopting a profounder strain, represent the Deity as the eternal move- 
ment of the universal principle, " the ever-streaming immanence of spirit 
in matter, which constantly manifests itself in individual existences, and 
which has no true objective (real) existence but in these individuals, 
which pass away again into the infinite." These are the sentiments of 
Strauss, author of the " Leben Jesu," whose rejection of a historical 
Christianity is the legitimate fruit of his speculative philosophy, just as a 
similar rejection of the Christian miracles, and particularly the miracle 
of Christ's resurrection, by Theodore Parker, is the fruit of the meta- 
physical system, which, as he remarks himself, " underlies" his theology. 
"Strauss," says Professor Tholuck, in his " Anzeiger," for May, 1836, "is 
a man who knows no other God than him who, in the human race, is 
constantly becoming man. He knows no Christ but the Jewish rabbi 
who made his confession of sin to John the Baptist ; and no heaven but 
that which speculative philosophy reveals for our enjoyment on the little 
planet we now inhabit." To the same purpose is Strauss' s own Ian 
guage : — " As man, considered as a mere finite spirit, and restricted to 
himself, has no reality, so God, considered as an infinite Spirit, restrict- 
ing himself to his infinity, has no reality. The infinite Spirit has reality 
only so far as he unites himself to finite spirits, (or manifests himself in 
them,) and the finite spirit has reality only so far as he sinks himself in 
the infinite." — Leben Jesu, p. *730. 

Such is the last result of that boasted philosophy, which begins by 
explaining everything, and ends with doubting everything. — T. 



160 vinet's miscellanies. 

exceedingly barren, an affection, so to speak, without 
result. Many great things are done on the earth, things 
at least that men call great. The activity of the mind 
jesponds to the activity of outward life. Each day 
sees some new plans brought to light, some new enter- 
prises begun. But amid all these actions, form an esti- 
mate of those which have for their principle the love of 
God, and you will admit, if the religion of love be the 
best, it is not the practice of a great number. In fact, 
the love of God, if by this you mean a love, real, earnest, 
dominant, is not natural to the heart of man. And, let 
us be honest ; how can we love, with such a love, a God 
from whom we are far removed by our sins and the 
worldliness of our affections ; a God who, in our better 
moments, cannot appear to us except in the aspect of a 
judge ; a God, whose paternal providence is veiled from 
our minds, because we know no better, or do not know 
at all, the adorable secret of all his procedure toward 
us ? How can we love him, so long as we cannot ac- 
count for the disorders of the physical and the moral 
worlds, and while the universe appears to us a vast 
arena, in which chance puts in competition justice and 
injustice, and coldly decides between them ? A doubt, 
a single doubt on the end of life and the intentions of 
God, would serve to tarnish, nay more, to extinguish, in 
the anxious heart, the first germs of love. But this is, 
more or less, the condition we are in, without the light 
of revelation. To what, then, is love reduced, and, by 
consequence, the religion of sentiment, in the greater 
number of the persons who appear to have approached 
the nearest to its attainment ? What ! does he, think 
you, love God, who opens his heart merely to the fugi- 
tive emotion which is excited by the view of his benefi- 



THE RELIGIONS OF MAN AND OF GOD. 161 

cence spread over the whole face of nature ? Does he 
love him, who, following the degree of sensibility with 
which he is endowed, yields to an involuntary tender- 
ness, at the thought of that immense paternity which 
embraces all animated beings, from the seraph to the 
worm ? One may experience this kind of love, and never 
be changed. If anything is evident, it is that the sensibil- 
ity which sometimes overflows in tears, often leaves in 
the heart a large place for selfishness ; just as our fellow- 
men do not always derive any advantage from the ten- 
derness we have felt at a distance from them. Love, 
true love of God, is a love of his truth, of his holiness, 
of his entire will ; true love is that which is reflected in 
obedience ; that which renews and purifies the con- 
science. 

This brings us to the fourth religion which man makes 
for himself, that of conscience. It is well, then, if in our 
turn we can say, this is good. For what is conscience, 
but the impulse to do the will of God, and to resemble 
him ? And what do we want when we have arrived at 
this ? Let us congratulate those who cleave to the re- 
ligion of conscience, and regret that their number is so 
small. But what am I saying ? Congratulate them ! 
Let us think a little ! Have we reflected on the course 
that opens before them ? The religion of conscience ! 
Is it not that which commands us to live for God, to do 
nothing but for God; to devote ourselves, body and 
soul, entirely to Him ? Is it not that which teaches us 
that to refuse anything to Him, is to rob Him ; because, 
by sovereign right, everything within and without us 
belongs to Him ? Is it not that which teaches that we 
cannot do too much for Him, and that all our future 
efforts can never compensate for a single past neglect ? 



162 vinet's miscellanies. 

Is it not that, then, which condemns our life, absolutely 
and irrevocably, and presents us before Him, not as 
children, not even as supplicants, but as condemned 
criminals ? Say, then, if the religion of conscience is 
good ! Yes ! for consciences free, indulgent to them- 
selves, without delicacy, and without purity ; but the 
greater your attachment to your duties, the more scru- 
pulous you are to fulfil them, the more severe and com- 
plete the idea you have formed of the divine law, the 
more shall that religion be terrible to you ; and, so far 
from offering you consolations, it will take away from 
you, one by one, all those you might derive from your- 
selves. Quit, for a moment, the scenes of the present, 
and the circle of Christianity ; observe, at a glance, the 
religion of mankind, enter all their temples, look upon 
all their altars ; — what do you see ? Blood ! Blood to 
honor the Deity ! Ah ! we are compelled to say that 
blood is there, for a thousand virtues neglected, a thou- 
sand obligations broken, a thousand enormities commit- 
ted ; that blood is the cry of a thousand consciences, 
which demand, from their entire nature, an impossible 
reparation, that blood is the solemn and terrible ac- 
knowledgment of the truths I urge upon you. And 
would you form an idea of this need of expiation ? 
Know then, that the impossibility of solving the problem 
the anguish of turning forever in a circle, without issue, 
has driven man to a kind of despair, a despair which has 
become barbarous. For the sake of finding a worthy 
victim, man has recourse to man himself — human blood 
has flowed in the temples, and the torment has not 
ceased ; human blood has effaced nothing ! To what 
victim, then, should man resort ? To a God ? But 
how should such a thing, enter into the heart of man ? 



THE RELIGIONS OF MAN AND OF GOD. 163 

We have passed in review all the systems of religion 
which would seem possible without Christianity. We 
think we have presented them with fidelity ; we have 
done them justice ; we have taken nothing from them. 
We might have demanded from them an account of 
what they owe to Christianity, and caused them to do 
honor to that holy religion, by a greater part of what 
they possess of what is specious, good and interesting, 
but we have abstained from that; we have confined 
ourselves, without further examination, to showing you 
the strength and the weakness of these systems. You 
are now, therefore, in a condition to pronounce judgment 
upon them. So far as it relates to us, here is our con- 
clusion. In vain has man, in his search of the supreme 
good, called into exercise his reason, his imagination, 
his heart and his conscience ; in vain has he laid all his 
powers under contribution; in vain has he done all 
that it is possible for man to do ; everywhere in his sys- 
tems there appear chasms wide and deep. The triple 
object of all religion, to enlighten, console and regene- 
rate, is fulfilled neither by the one nor the other of these 
religions, nor by all of them together. Is the religion of 
the imagination the subject of inquiry ? That is the charm 
of a few fugitive moments ; it is neither the light, the 
support, nor the sanctification of the soul. Do we try 
the religion of thought ? Its only reasonable pretension 
is to enlighten ; but it fulfils it so badly, that it does 
nothing more than deepen the gloom which rests on 
religion. Do we address ourselves to the religion of 
sentiment ? It moves the surface of the soul ; it does 
not reach its depths, it does not regenerate it. In fine, 
the best of all these religions, that of conscience, by its 
very excellence, demonstrates the impotence of man to 



164 vinet's miscellanies. 

form a religion for himself. It can only show us the 
chasm which sin has made between us and God ; but it 
cannot fill it up. It teaches us, that in order to be 
united to God, two things are necessary, which it does 
not give us, and which none of our faculties can give 
us, — Pardon and Regeneration. The man who pre- 
tends to accomplish, by his own power, the work of his 
salvation, must first pardon and then regenerate him- 
self. It is necessary he should efface the very last ves- 
tige of all his former sins, that is to say, that he should 
do what cannot be done. It is moreover necessary, 
that, declaring war with his nature, he should force it 
to love God, to love the good, to hate the evil ; that he 
should renew his inclinations from their foundation : in 
a word, that he should destroy the old man, and create 
in himself the new. To ask you. if you can do such 
things, is to ask, if a criminal, alone in the bottom of 
his dungeon, can provide his own letters of pardon, or 
a combatant, chained hand and foot, can promise him- 
self the victory. It is to ask you, if you can do that 
to-morrow, which you cannot do to-day ; it is to ask 
you, if it will ever be possible, with the powers of your 
nature alone, to re-make that nature. 

Nevertheless, there is not without this, a religion 
complete and satisfying, — say rather there is no religion 
at all. And without this, you have reason to believe 
yourselves abandoned by God. Ah, why should you 
not turn your attention to that gospel, which seems to 
have divined all the secrets of your nature, and which 
meets all the wants of your soul ? Why should not 
the view of the cross, where jout pardon is written, the 
promise of the Holy Spirit, source of Regeneration, 
cause you to leap for joy ! Why should you not with 



THE RELIGIONS OF MAN AND OF GOD. 165 

ardor, desire that the doctrine which remedies all, harmo- 
nizes all, satisfies all, should be as true as it is beautiful ? 
Why can you give yourselves a moment's repose, before 
you enlighten your minds respecting it, by all the means 
in your power ? If such a religion has not been given 
to man, he must die; yes, die of grief for having been 
condemned to live, — die of grief for having been formed 
with insatiable desires after perfection, with an ardent 
thirst for God, and to feel that these desires, and this 
thirst, are only a cruel deception, a fatal mockery of 
the unknown power that created us ! 

But shall I hear from Christians, not the joyous ac- 
cents of souls convinced, but the anxious appeals of 
hearts that are doubting still ? No ! let us together 
hail with our benedictions, that religion, alone complete, 
which responds to all the wants of man, in offering to 
each of his faculties an inexhaustible aliment ; a religion 
of the imagination, to which it offers magnificent pros- 
pects ; a religion of the heart, which it softens by the 
exhibition of a love above all love ; a religion of thought, 
which it attaches to the contemplation of a system, the 
most vast and harmonious ; a religion of the conscience, 
which it renders at once more delicate and tranquil ; 
but above all, a religion of the grace and love of God ; 
for it is necessarily all these combined. Why should 
not the truth entire, satisfy man entire ? Let us hail, 
with admiration, that religion which reconciles all these 
contrasts, a religion of justice and grace, of fear and 
love, of obedience and liberty, of activity and repose, 
of faith and reason ; for if error has cut up and divided 
everything in man, if it has made of his soul a vast 
scene of contradictions, truth brings back all into unity. 
Such is the religion which never entered into the heart 



166 vinet's miscellanies. 

of man, even in the highest culture of his moral sense, 
and the most extensive development of his intelligence ; 
or, as the apostle expresses it, "which none of the 
princes of this world have known." 

That which remained concealed from philosophers 
and sages, in the most brilliant periods of the human 
intellect, twelve poor fishermen, from the lakes of Ju- 
dea, quitted their nets to announce to the world. Cer- 
tainly they had not more of imagination, of reason, of 
heart, or of conscience, than the rest of mankind ; yet 
they put to silence the wisdom of sages, emptied the 
schools of philosophers, closed the gates of every tem- 
ple, extinguished the fire on every altar. They exhib- 
ited to the world their crucified Master, and the world 
recognized in him that which their anxious craving had 
sought in vain for three thousand years. A new moral- 
ity, new social relations, and a new universe sprang 
into being, at the voice of these poor people, ignorant 
of letters, and of all philosophy. It remains with your 
good sense to judge, if these twelve fishermen have 
used their own wisdom, or the wisdom which cometh 
from above. 

We stop at this point, — man is found incapable of 
forming a religion, and God has come to the aid of his 
weakness. Bless, then, your God from the bottom of 
your heart, you, who after long search, have, at last, 
found an asylum. And you who still float on the vast 
sea of human opinions, you who, violently driven from 
one system to another, feel your anguish increasing, 
and your heart becoming more and more tarnished; 
you who to this day have never been able to live with 
God, nor without God, — come and see, if this gospel, 
scarcely noticed by your heedless eyes, is not perhaps 



THE RELIGIONS OP MAN AND OF GOD. 167 

that, for which you call with so many fruitless sighs. 
And, thou, God of the gospel ! God of nations ! Infinite 
Love ! reveal thyself to wounded hearts, make thyself 
known to fainting spirits, and cause them to know joy, 
peace, and true virtue. 



THE MYSTERIES OF CHRISTIANITY. 

" Things which have not entered into the heart of man."— 1 Cor. ii. 9. 



We have seen that we are not in a condition to give 
ourselves a religion, and that God, in his goodness, has 
condescended to aid our weakness. But the reason of 
man does not voluntarily permit itself to be convinced 
of impotence ; it does not willingly suffer its limits to 
be prescribed; it is strongly tempted to reject ideas 
which it has not conceived, a religion which it has not 
invented ; and if the doctrines proposed to it are, in 
their nature, mysterious and incomprehensible, this feel- 
ing of dissatisfaction proceeds to open revolt, and in 
the case of many, results in an obstinate scepticism. 

I do not comprehend, therefore I do not believe ; the 
gospel is full of mysteries, therefore I do not receive the 
gospel ; — such is one of the favorite arguments of infi- 
delity. To see how much is made of this, and what 
confidence it inspires, we might believe it solid, or, at 
least specious ; but it is neither the one nor the other ; 
it will not bear the slightest attention, the most super- 
ficial examination of reason ; and if it still enjoys some 
favor in the world, this is but a proof of the lightness 
of our judgments upon things worthy of our most seri- 
ous attention. 



THE MYSTERIES OF CHRISTIANITY. 169 

Upon what, in fact, does this argument rest ? Upon 
the claim of comprehending everything in the religion 
which God has offered or could offer us. A claim 
equally unjust, unreasonable, useless. This we proceed 
to develop. 

In the first place, it is an unjust claim. It is to de- 
mand of God what he does not owe us. To prove this, 
let us suppose that God has given a religion to man, and 
let us further suppose that religion to be the Gospel ; 
for this absolutely changes nothing to the argument. 
We may believe that God was free, at least, with ref- 
erence to us, to give us or not to give us a religion; 
but it must be admitted that in granting it, he contracts 
engagements to us, and that the first favor lays him un- 
der a necessity of conferring other favors. For this is 
merely to say, that God must be consistent, and that 
he finishes what he has begun. Since it is by a writ- 
ten revelation he manifests his designs respecting us, it 
is necessary he should fortify that revelation by all the 
authority which would at least determine us to re- 
ceive it ; it is necessary he should give us the means of 
judging whether the men who speak to us in his name 
are really sent by him ; in a word, it is necessary we 
should be assured that the Bible is truly the word of 
God. 

It would not indeed be necessary that the conviction 
of each of us should be gained by the same kind of evi- 
dence. Some shall be led to Christianity by the his- 
torical or external arguments ; they shall prove to 
themselves the truth of the Bible, as the truth of all 
history is proved ; they shall satisfy themselves that 
the books of which it it is composed are certainly those 
of the times and of the authors to which they are as- 

8 



170 vinet's miscellanies. 

cribed. This settled, they shall compare the prophe- 
cies contained in these ancient documents with the 
events that have happened in subsequent ages ; they 
shall assure themselves of the reality of the miraculous 
facts related in these books, and shall thence infer the 
necessary intervention of divine power, which alone 
disposes the forces of nature, and can alone interrupt or 
modify their action. Others, less fitted for such investiga- 
tions, shall be struck with the internal evidence of the 
Holy Scriptures. Finding there the state of their souls 
perfectly described, their wants fully expressed, and the 
true remedies for their maladies completely indicated ; 
struck with a character of truth and candor which 
nothing can imitate ; in fine, feeling themselves in their 
inner nature moved, changed, renovated, by the myste- 
rious influence of these holy writings, they shall acquire, 
by such means, a conviction of which they cannot 
always give an account to others, but which is not the 
less legitimate, irresistible, and immovable. Such is 
the double road by which an entrance is gained into 
the asylum of faith. But it was due from the wisdom 
of God, from his justice, and, we venture to say it, from 
the honor of his government, that he should open to 
man this double road; for, if he desired man to be 
saved by knowledge, on the same principle, he engaged 
himself to furnish him the means of knowledge. 

Behold, whence come the obligations of the Deity 
with reference to us, — which obligations he has fulfilled. 
Enter on this double method of proof. Interrogate his- 
tory, time and places, respecting the authenticity of the 
Scriptures ; grasp all the difficulties, sound all the objec- 
tions ; do not permit yourselves to be too easily con- 
vinced ; be the more severe upon that book, as it pro- 



THE MYSTERIES OF CHRISTIANITY. 171 

fesses to contain the sovereign rule of your life, and the 
disposal of your destiny; you are permitted to do this, 
nay, you are encouraged to do it, provided you proceed 
to the investigation with the requisite capacities and 
with pure intentions. Or, if you prefer another method, 
examine, with an honest heart, the contents of the 
Scriptures ; inquire, while you run over the words of 
Jesus, if ever man spake like this man ; inquire if the 
wants of your soul, long deceived, and the anxieties of 
your spirit, long cherished in vain, do not, in the teach- 
ing and work of Christ, find that satisfaction and repose 
which no wisdom was ever able to procure you ; breathe, 
if I may thus express myself, that perfume of truth, of 
candor and purity, which exhales from every page of the 
gospel ; see, if, in all these respects, it does not bear the 
undeniable seal of inspiration and divinity. Finally, 
test it, and if the gospel produces upon you a contrary 
effect, return to the books and the wisdom of men, and 
ask of them what Christ has not been able to give you. 
But, if, neglecting these two ways, made accessible to 
you, and trodden by the feet of ages, you desire, before 
all, that the Christian religion should, in every point, 
render itself comprehensible to your mind, and compla- 
cently strip itself of all mysteries ; if you wish to pene- 
trate beyond the veil, to find there, not the aliment 
which gives life to the soul, but that which would gratify 
your restless curiosity, I maintain that you raise against 
God a claim the most indiscreet, the most rash and un- 
just ; for he has never engaged, either tacitly or expressly, 
to discover to you the secret which your eye craves ; 
and such audacious importunity is fit only to excite his 
indignation. He has given you what he owed you, more 
indeed than he owed you ; — the rest is with himself 



172 vinet's miscellanies. 

If a claim so unjust could be admitted, where, I ask 
you, would be the limit of your demands ? Already 
you require more from God than he has accorded to 
angels ; for these eternal mysteries which trouble you, — 
the harmony of the divine prescience with human free- 
dom, — the origin of evil and its ineffable remedy, — the 
incarnation of the eternal Word, — the relations of the 
God-man with his Father, — the atoning virtue of his 
sacrifice, — the regenerating efficacy of the Spirit-com- 
forter, — all these things are secrets, the knowledge 
of which is hidden from angels themselves, who, ac- 
cording to the word of the apostle, stoop to explore 
their depths, and cannot. If you reproach the Eternal 
for having kept the knowledge of these divine myste- 
ries to himself, why do you not reproach him for the 
thousand other limits he has prescribed to you ? Why 
not reproach him for not having given you wings like 
a bird, to visit the regions which till now have been 
scanned only by your eyes ? Why not reproach him 
for not giving you, besides the five senses with which you 
are provided, ten other senses which he has perhaps 
granted to other creatures, and which procure for them 
perceptions of which you have no idea ? Why not, in 
fine, reproach him for having caused the darkness of night 
to succeed the brightness of day invariably on the earth ? 
Ah ! you do not reproach him for that. You love that 
night which brings rest to so many fatigued bodies and 
weary spirits ; which suspends, in so many wretches, 
the feeling of grief ; — that night, during which orphans, 
slaves, and criminals cease to be, because over all their 
misfortunes and sufferings it spreads, with the opiate of 
sleep, the thick veil of oblivion ; you love that night, 
which, peopling the deserts of the heavens with ten 



THE MYSTERIES OF CHRISTIANITY. 173 

thousand stars, not known to the day, reveals the infi- 
nite to our ravished imagination. Well, then, why do 
you not, for a similar reason, love the night of divine 
mysteries, — night, gracious and salutary, in which rea- 
son humbles itself, and finds refreshment and repose ; 
where the darkness even is a revelation ; where one of 
the principal attributes of God, immensity, discovers it- 
self much more fully to our mind ; where, in fine, the 
tender relations he has permitted us to form with him- 
self, are guarded from all admixture of familiarity, by the 
thought that the Being who has humbled himself to us, 
is, at the same time, the inconceivable God who reigns 
before all time, who includes in himself all existences 
and all conditions of existence, the centre of all thought, 
the law of all law, the supreme and final reason of 
everything ! So that, if you are just, instead of re- 
proaching him for the secrets of religion, you will bless 
him that he has enveloped you in mysteries. 

But this claim is not only unjust towards God ; it is 
also in itself exceedingly unreasonable. 

What is religion ? It is God putting himself in com- 
munication with man ; the Creator with the creature, 
the infinite with the finite. There already, without 
going further, is a mystery ; a mystery common to all 
religions, impenetrable in all religions. If, then, every- 
thing which is a mystery offends you, you are arrested 
on the threshold, I will not say of Christianity, but of 
every religion ; I say, even of that religion which is 
called natural, because it rejects revelation and mira- 
cles ; for it necessarily implies, at the very least, a con- 
nection, a communication of some sort between God 
and man, — the contrary being equivalent to atheism. 
Your claim prevents you from having any belief; and 



174 vinet's miscellanies. 

because you have not been willing to be Christians, it 
will not allow you to be deists. 

" It is of no consequence," you say, " we pass over 
that difficulty ; we suppose between God and us connec- 
tions we cannot conceive ; we admit them because they 
are necessary to us. But this is the only step we are wil- 
ling to take : we have already yielded too much to yield 
more." Say more, — say you have granted too much not 
to grant much more, not to grant all ! You have con- 
sented to admit, without comprehending it, that there 
may be communications from God to you, and from you 
to God. But consider well what is implied in such a 
supposition. It implies that you are dependent, and 
yet free, — this you do not comprehend ; — it implies that 
the Spirit of God can make itself understood by your 
spirit, — this you do not comprehend ; — it implies that 
your prayers may exert an influence on the will of 
God, — this you do not comprehend. It is necessary 
you should receive all these mysteries, in order to es- 
tablish with God connections the most vague and super- 
ficial, and by the very side of which atheism is placed. 
And when, by a powerful effort with yourselves, you 
have done so much as to admit these mysteries, you re- 
coil from those of Christianity ! You have accepted the 
foundation, and refuse the superstructure ! You have ac- 
cepted the principle and refuse the details ! You are 
right, no doubt, so soon as it is proved to you, that the 
religion which contains these mysteries does not come 
from God ; or rather, that these mysteries contain contra- 
dictory ideas. But you are not justified in denying them, 
for the sole reason that you do not understand them ; and 
the reception you have given to the first kind of myste- 
ries compels you, by the same rule, to receive the others. 



THE MYSTERIES OF CHRISTIANITY. 175 

This is not all. Not only are mysteries an insepa- 
rable part, nay, the very substance of all religion ; but it 
is absolutely impossible that a true religion should not 
present a great number of mysteries. If it is true, it 
ought to teach more truths respecting God and divine 
things, than any other, than all others together ; but 
each of these truths has a relation to the infinite, and 
by consequence, borders on a mystery. How should 
it be otherwise in religion, when it is thus in nature it- 
self ? Behold God in nature ! The more he gives us 
to contemplate, the more he gives to astonish us. To 
each creature is attached some mystery. A grain of 
sand is an abyss ! Now, if the manifestation which 
God has made of himself in nature suggests to the ob- 
server a thousand questions which cannot be answered, 
how will it be, when to that first revelation, another is 
added ; when God the Creator and Preserver reveals 
himself under new aspects as God the Reconciler and 
Saviour ? Shall not mysteries multiply with discover- 
ies ? With each new day, shall we not see associated 
a new night ? And shall we not purchase each increase 
of knowledge with an increase of ignorance ? Has not 
the doctrine of grace, so necessary, so consoling, alone 
opened a profound abyss, into which, for eighteen cen- 
turies, rash and restless spirits have been constantly 
plunging ? 

It is, then, clearly necessary that Christianity should, 
more than any other religion, be mysterious, simply be- 
cause it is true. Like mountains, which, the higher 
they are, cast the larger shadows, the gospel is the more 
obscure and mysterious on account of its sublimity. 
After this, will you be indignant that you do not com- 
prehend everything in the gospel ? It would, forsooth, 



176 vinet's miscellanies. 

be a truly surprising thing, if the ocean could not be 
held in the hollow of your hand, or uncreated wisdom 
within the limits of your intelligence ! It would be truly 
unfortunate, if a finite being could not embrace the in- 
finite, and that, in the vast assemblage of things, there 
should be some idea beyond its grasp ! In other words, 
it would be truly unfortunate, if God himself should 
know something which man does not know ! 

Let us acknowledge, then, how insensate is such a 
claim when it is made with reference to religion. 

But let us also recollect how much, in making such a 
claim, we shall be in opposition to ourselves ; for the 
submission we dislike in religion, we cherish in a thou- 
sand other things. It happens to us every day to ad- 
mit things we do not understand ; and to do so with- 
out the least repugnance. The things, the knowledge 
of which is refused us, are much more numerous than 
we perhaps think. Few diamonds are perfectly pure ; 
still fewer truths are perfectly clear. The union of 
our soul with our body is a mystery ; our most familiar 
emotions and affections are a mystery ; the action of 
thought and of will is a mystery ; our very existence is 
a mystery. Why do we admit these various facts ? Is 
it because we understand them ? No, certainly, but be- 
cause they are self-evident, and because they are truths 
by which we live. In religion we have no other course 
to take. We ought to know whether it is true and 
necessary ; and once convinced of these two points, 
we ought, like the angels, to submit to the necessity of 
being ignorant of some things. 

And why do we not submit cheerfully to a privation, 
which after all is not one ? To desire the knowledge 
of mysteries is to desire what is utterly useless ; it is 



THE MYSTERIES OF CHRISTIANITY. 177 

to raise, as I have said before, a claim the most vain and 
idle. What, in reference to us, is the object of the gos- 
pel ? Evidently to regenerate and save us. But it at- 
tains this end wholly by the things it reveals. Of what 
use would it be to know those it conceals from us ? 
We possess the knowledge which can enlighten our con- 
sciences, rectify our inclinations, renew our hearts ; 
what should we gain, if we possessed other knowledge ? 
It infinitely concerns us to know that the Bible is the 
word of God ; does it equally concern us to know in 
what way the holy men that wrote it were moved by 
the Holy Ghost ? It is of infinite moment to us to 
know that Jesus Christ is the Son of God ; need we 
know precisely in what way the divine and human 
natures are united in his adorable person ? It is of in- 
finite importance for us to know that unless we are 
born again we cannot enter the kingdom of God, and 
that the Holy Spirit is the author of the new birth ; — 
shall we be further advanced if we know the divine pro- 
cess by which that wonder is performed ? Is it not 
enough for us to know the truths that save ? Of what 
use, then, would it be to know those which have not the 
slightest bearing on our salvation ? " Though I know 
all mysteries," says St. Paul, " and have not charity, 
I am nothing." St. Paul was content not to know, 
provided he had charity ; shall not we, following his ex- 
ample, be content also without knowledge, provided that, 
like him, we have charity, that is to say, life ? 

But some one will say, If the knowledge of mysteries 
is really without influence on our salvation, why have 
they been indicated to us at all ? What if it should 
be to teach us not to be too prodigal of our wherefores ! 
if it should be to serve as an exercise of our faith, a 
8* 



178 VINET S MISCELLANIES. 

test of our submission ! But we will not stop with such 
a reply. 

Observe, I pray you, in what manner the mysteries 
of which you complain have taken their part in religion. 
You readily perceive they are not by themselves, but 
associated with truths which have a direct bearing on 
your salvation. They contain them, they serve to en- 
velop them; but they are not themselves the truths 
that save. It is with these mysteries as it is with the 
vessel that contains a medicinal draught ; it is not the 
vessel that cures, but the draught ; yet the draught 
could not be presented without the vessel. Thus each 
truth that saves is contained in a mystery, which, in it- 
self, has no power to save. So the great work of ex- 
piation is necessarily attached to the incarnation of the 
Son of God, which is a mystery; so the sanctifying 
graces of the new covenant are necessarily connected 
with the effluence of the Holy Spirit, which is a mys- 
tery ; so, too, the divinity of religion finds a seal and 
an attestation in the miracles, which are mysteries. 
Everywhere the light is born from darkness, and dark- 
ness accompanies the light. These two orders of truths 
are so united, so interlinked, that you cannot remove 
the one without the other ; and each of the mysteries 
you attempt to tear from religion, would carry with it 
one of the truths which bear directly on your regenera- 
tion and salvation. Accept the mysteries, then, not as 
truths that can save you, but as the necessary condi- 
tions of the merciful work of the Lord in your behalf. 

The true point at issue in reference to religion is 
this : — Does the religion which is proposed to us, change 
the heart, unite to God, prepare for heaven ? If Chris- 
tianity produces these effects, we will leave the enemies 



THE MYSTERIES OF CHRISTIANITY. 179 

of the cross free to revolt against its mysteries, and tax 
them with absurdity. The gospel, we will say to them, 
is then an absurdity ; you have discovered it. But be- 
hold what a new species of absurdity that certainly is, 
which attaches man to all his duties, regulates human 
life better than all the doctrines of sages, plants in his 
bosom harmony, order, and peace, causes him joyfully 
to fulfil all the offices of civil life, renders him better fit- 
ted to live, better fitted to die, and which, were it gene- 
rally received, would be the support and safeguard of 
society! Cite to us, among all human absurdities, a 
single one which produces such effects. If that " fool- 
ishness" we preach produces effects like these, is it not 
natural to conclude that it is truth itself? And if these 
things have not entered the heart of man, it is not be- 
cause they are absurd, but because they are divine. 

Make, my readers, but a single reflection. You are 
obliged to confess that none of the religions which man 
may invent can satisfy his wants, or save his soul. 
Thereupon you have a choice to make. You will 
either reject them all as insufficient and false, and seek 
for nothing better, since man cannot invent better, and 
then you will abandon to chance, to caprice of temper- 
ament or of opinion, your moral life and future destiny ; 
or you will adopt that other religion which some treat 
as folly, and it will render you holy and pure, blameless 
in the midst of a perverse generation, united to God by 
love, and to your brethren by charity, indefatigable in 
doing good, happy in life, happy in death. Suppose, 
after all this, you shall be told that this religion is false ; 
but, meanwhile, it has restored in you the image of God, 
re-established your primitive connections with that great 
Being, and put you in a condition to enjoy life and the 



180 vinet's miscellanies. 

happiness of heaven. By means of it you have become 
such that at the last day, it is impossible that God 
should not receive you as his children and make you 
partakers of his glory. You are made fit for paradise, 
nay, paradise has commenced for you even here, be- 
cause you love. This religion has done for you what 
all religion proposes, and what no other has realized. 
Nevertheless, by the supposition, it is false ! And what 
more could it do, were it true ? Rather do you not see 
that this is a splendid proof of its truth ? Do you not 
see that it is impossible that a religion which leads to 
God should not come from God, and that the absurdity 
is precisely that of supposing that you can be regenera- 
ted by a falsehood ? 

Suppose that afterwards, as at the first, you do not 
comprehend. It seems necessary, then, you should be 
saved by the things you do not comprehend. Is that a 
misfortune ? Are you the less saved ? Does it become 
you to demand from God an explanation of an obscurity 
which does not injure you, when, with reference to 
everything essential, he has been prodigal of light ? 
The first disciples of Jesus, men without culture and 
learning, received truths which they did not compre- 
hend, and spread them through the world. A crowd 
of sages and men of genius have received, from the 
hands of these poor people, truths which they compre- 
hended no more than they. The ignorance of the one, 
and the science of the other, have been equally docile. 
Do, then, as the ignorant and the wise have done. 
Embrace with affection those truths which have never 
entered into your heart, and which will save you. Do 
not lose, in vain discussions, the time which is gliding 



THE MYSTERIES OF CHRISTIANITY. 181 

away, and which is bearing you into the cheering or 
appalling light of eternity. Hasten to be saved. Love 
now ; one day you will know. May the Lord Jesus 
prepare you for that period of light, of repose, and of 
happiness ! 



THE GOSPEL COMPREHENDED BY THE HEAET. 



Things which have not entered into the heart of man, but which God hath 
prepared for them that love him."— 1 Cor. ii. 9. 



God has destined the world to be, not only the the- 
atre of our activity, but also the object of our study. 
He has concealed in the depths of nature innumerable 
secrets, which he invites us to fathom ; innumerable 
truths, which he encourages us to discover. To pene- 
trate these secrets, to discover these truths, it is neces- 
sary to possess certain intellectual faculties, and to have 
them suitably exercised, but nothing more. The dis- 
positions of the heart have no direct influence on the 
acquisition of this kind of knowledge. It is with this 
knowledge, as it is with " the rain, which God causeth 
to fall on the just and the unjust, and the sun which he 
maketh to shine upon the good and the evil." To ac- 
quire it, does not necessarily suppose a pure heart or a 
benevolent character ; and, unhappily, it is too common 
to see the finest gifts of genius united with the most 
deplorable selfishness and the deepest depravity of man- 
ners. God seems to have prepared the truths of human 
science indifferently for his friends and enemies. It is 
not thus with the truths of religion. God, it is said, in 
the Scriptures, " hath prepared them for those that love 



THE GOSPEL COMPREHENDED BY THE HEART. 183 

him." Not that he has excluded from the possession 
of them, men of learning and genius ; but neither learn- 
ing nor genius is sufficient here as in the other sciences. 
Love is the true interpreter of the truths of the gos- 
pel. The " wisdom of this world and of the princes of 
this world," is vanquished by the simplicity of love, 
love and wisdom among them that are perfect, conform- 
ably to that declaration of St. John, " He that loveth 
God is born of God and knoweth God." 

That which is often seen occurring between two 
persons of different languages, takes place between God 
and man ; it is necessary that a person versed in both 
languages should intervene between the two parties, 
and listening to the words of the one, put them within 
reach of the other, by rendering them into the idiom he 
understands. But between God and man, between the 
gospel and our soul, that interpreter is love. Love 
renders intelligible to man the truths of the gospel, — 
not indeed those abstract truths which relate to the es- 
sence of God, the knowledge of which, as we have seen, 
is equally inaccessible and useless to us, — but those 
other truths, which concern our relations to God, and 
constitute the very foundation of religion. These are 
the truths which escape from reason, and which love 
seizes without difficulty. 

You are surprised, perhaps, to see filled by love, by a 
sentiment of the heart, a function which seems to you 
to belong only to reason. But please to reflect that the 
greater part of our knowledge is derived to us immedi- 
ately from another source than reason. When we de- 
sire to obtain a knowledge of a natural object, it is, pri- 
marily, our senses we make use of, and not our reason. 
It is at first by sight that we acquire a knowledge of the 



184 vinet's miscellanies. 

size and form of bodies ; by hearing, that of sounds ; 
and by smell, that of odors. It is necessary that reason 
should afterwards perform a part, and connect its ope- 
rations with those of the organs ; but whatever may be 
the importance of its intervention, we must admit that 
the knowledge of sensible objects and their properties is 
derived essentially from the senses. 

Things transpire in no other way in the moral world. 
It is not by the intellect alone, nor by the intellect first, 
that we can judge of things of this order. To know 
them we must have a sense also, which is called the 
moral sense. The intellect may come in afterwards as 
an auxiliary ; it observes, compares, and classes our im- 
pressions, but it does not produce them ; and it would 
be as little reasonable to pretend that we owe them to 
it, as to affirm that it is by the ear we obtain the knowl- 
edge of colors, by sight that of perfumes, and by smell 
that of sounds and harmonies. The things of the heart 
are not truly comprehended but by the heart. 

Permit us to dwell a moment upon this idea ; for we 
feel the necessity of explaining it thoroughly. In say- 
ing that the heart comprehends, do we say that it be- 
comes reason, or that it conducts a process of reason- 
ing ? By no means. The heart does not comprehend 
like the reason ; but it comprehends as well, if not bet- 
ter. As to the reason, what is it to comprehend ? It 
is to seize the thread of logical deduction, the chain of 
ideas which joins together two or more facts ; it is to 
attain conviction, assurance, by means other than ex- 
perience ; it is to be placed by the intellect in relative 
connection with those objects, an immediate contact 
with which is denied us. The comprehension of the 
mind, to speak plainly, is nothing more than a supple- 



THE GOSPEL COMPREHENDED BY THE HEART. 185 

ment to the inevitable chasms in our experience.* 
These chasms occur either from the absence of the ob- 
jects themselves, or from their nature, which has no 
point of contact with ours. If these two obstacles did 
not exist, or if it were possible to remove them, man 
would have nothing to comprehend ; for he would touch, 
he would grasp, he would taste everything. Reason in 
him would be replaced by intuition. Wherever intuition 
has place, there is no more comprehension, for it is more 
than comprehension ; or if any one chooses that it should 
be comprehension, it is a comprehension of a new na- 
ture, of a superior order, which explains everything, 
without effort, to which everything is clear, but which 
it cannot communicate, by words, to the reason of an- 
other. 

But it is the same with the comprehension of the 
heart. Doubtless it has its precise limits. It extends 
to everything within the domain of sentiment, but to 
nothing beyond. Reason, however, has its limits also, 
quite as distinctly marked, and can no more overleap 
them than the heart those which belong to it. Applied 
to things which belong exclusively to the sphere of 

* The word experience is here used in its strictly philosophical sense. 
It embraces the facts of sensation and consciousness, the emotions and 
perceptions of the mind. These constitute an assemblage of facts, 
which it is the province of reason, on the ground of its own intuitive 
convictions, first to analyze, and then combine, under general heads or 
systems ; and thus supply the deficiencies or chasms in our experience. 
It especially perceives and classifies relations, and deduces from, per- 
haps communicates to, the whole those general ideas which embody, 
in their comprehensive range, an infinite number of scattered, but re- 
lated facts. Reason, therefore, is a supplement to our experience, and 
is a purely intellectual process. It involves no feeling or affection, and 
may exist, in the greatest perfection, without a single holy or virtuous 
impulse. — T. 



186 vinet's miscellanies. 

sentiment, it wanders in obscurity ; it passes by the 
side of sentiment as if it were a stranger ; it neither 
understands nor is understood ; and retires from a use- 
less struggle, without having either taken or given any- 
thing. Reason on the one side, and the heart on the 
other, do not comprehend each other. They have no 
mutual agreement, except in that of a disdainful pity. 

To render this truth more evident, suppose, on the 
one hand, a generous man, a hero, a soul ever burning 
with the lofty flame of devotion ; and on the other, a 
man of quick intelligence, of reason vast and profound, 
but deprived, were it possible, of all sensibility, do you 
not believe that the first would, all his life long, be an 
enigma to the other ? How, indeed, could the latter 
conceive of those transports of enthusiasm, those acts 
of self-denial, and those sublime expressions, the source 
of which never existed in his own soul ? " The spirit- 
ual man," says St. Paul, " judgeth all things, and no one 
(unless spiritual) can judge him." Let us, by sup- 
position, apply this expression to the sensitive and 
generous being of whom we speak ; no one, unless he 
has the germs of the same emotions, can form a judg- 
ment of him ; a fact distinctly recognized by those who 
have said, that great souls pass through the world with- 
out being understood. 

Affectation ! hypocrisy ! is the cry frequently heard, 
in view of certain manifestations, and especially of re- 
ligious manifestations. An ardor which glows in the 
depths of the soul, which engrosses all the faculties, and 
which is incessantly renewed from its own proper 
source, appears to some too strange to be credited. In 
order to believe it, they need only to feel it ; but cer- 
tain it is, that unless they do feel it, they cannot con- 



THE GOSPEL COMPREHENDED BY THE HEART. 187 

ceive of it. And they will continue to tax with affecta- 
tion and hypocrisy, a sentiment which perhaps restrains 
itself, and discovers only half of its energy. A mistake, 
how natural ! All the efforts of the most active intel- 
lect cannot give us the conception of the taste of a fruit 
we have never tasted, or the perfume of a flow T er we 
have never smelt, much less of an affection we have 
never felt. 

It is with the heights of the soul, as it is with the 
sublimities of the firmament. When on a serene night, 
millions of stars sparkle in the depths of the sky, the 
gorgeous splendor of the starry vault ravishes every 
one that has eyes ; but he to whom Providence has de- 
nied the blessing of sight, would in vain possess a mind 
open to the loftiest conceptions ; in vain would his in- 
tellectual capacity transcend what is common among 
men. All that intelligence, and all the power he might 
add by study to his rare gifts, will not aid him in form- 
ing a single idea of that ravishing spectacle ; while at 
his side, a man, without talent or culture, has only to 
raise his eyes, to embrace at a glance, and in some 
measure enjoy, all the splendors of the firmament, and, 
through his vision, to receive into his soul the impres- 
sions which such a spectacle cannot fail to produce. 

Another sky, and one as magnificent as the azure 
vault stretched over our heads, is revealed to us in the 
gospel. Divine truths are the stars of that mystic sky, 
and they shine in it brighter and purer than the stars 
of the firmament ; but there must be an eye to see them, 
and that eye is love. The gospel is a work of love. 
Christianity is only love realized under its purest form ; 
and since the light of the world cannot be known without 
an eye, love cannot be comprehended but by the heart. 



188 vinet's miscellanies. 

You may have exhausted all the powers of your 
reason, and all the resources of your knowledge, to es- 
tablish the authenticity of the Scriptures ; you may have 
perfectly explained the apparent contradictions of the 
sacred books ; you may have grasped the connection of 
the fundamental truths of the gospel ; you may have done 
all this, yet if you do not love, the gospel will be to you 
nothing but a dead letter, and a sealed book ; its revela- 
tions will appear to you but as abstractions, and naked 
ideas ; its system but a speculation unique in its kind ; 
nay, more, whatever in the gospel is most attractive, most 
precious and sweet, but an arbitrary conception, a strange 
dogma, a painful test of your faith, and nothing more. 

But let love, sweet, gracious, luminous, interpreting, 
come between the gospel and the human soul, and the 
truth of the gospel shall have a meaning, — and one as 
clear as it is profound. Then shall your soul find itself 
free and happy, in the midst of these strange revelations. 
Then shall those truths you have accepted, through 
submission and obedience, become to you as familiar 
and as necessarily true, as those common every-day 
truths, upon which depends your existence. Then 
shall you penetrate, without an effort, into the marvel- 
lous system, which your reason dreaded, so to speak, to 
see too near, in a confused apprehension of being 
tempted to infidelity. Then shall you probably be as- 
tonished, that you had never perceived, conjectured, 
discovered it ; that previous to revelation, you had 
never found out that such a system was as necessary to 
the glory of God, as to the happiness of man. 

So long as man, with reason alone, has climbed up 
Calvary, and gone around the cross, he has seen noth- 
ing but darkness in the divine work of expiation. For 



THE GOSPEL COMPREHENDED BY THE HEART. 189 

whole ages might he remain in contemplation before 
that mysterious fact, but would not succeed in raising 
from it the veil. Ah ! how can reason, cold reason, 
comprehend such a thing as the substitution of the 
innocent for the guilty ; as the compassion which re- 
veals itself in severity of punishment, in that shed- 
ding of blood, without which, it is said, there can 
be no expiation. It will not make, I dare affirm, a 
single step towards the knowledge of that divine 
mystery, until casting away its ungrateful specula- 
tions, it yields to a power more competent to the task 
of terminating the difficulty. That power is the heart ; 
which fixes itself entirely on the love that shines forth 
in the work of redemption ; cleaves without distraction 
to the sacrifice of the adorable victim ; lets the natural 
impression of that unparalleled love penetrate freely, 
and develop itself gradually, in its interior. O how 
quickly, then, are the veils torn away, and the shadows 
dissipated forever ! How little difficulty does he that 
loves, find in comprehending love ! How natural to him 
does it appear, that God, infinite in all things, should be 
infinite also in his compassion ! How inconceivable to 
him, on the other hand, that human kearts should not 
be capable of feeling the beauty of a work, without which 
God could not manifest himself entire ! How astonished 
is he at the blindness of those who read and re-read the 
Scriptures without comprehending the central truth ; 
who pass and re-pass before a love all-divine, without 
recognizing or even perceiving a work all-divine! 

The Holy Scriptures have spoken to him of prayer, 
as a powerful means of attracting the grace of God ; as 
a force to which divine power is willing to submit, and 
which seems, in some sense, to share with the Deity 



190 vinet's miscellanies. 

the empire of the universe. Before such an idea rea- 
son remains confounded. There is no objection it does 
not involuntarily raise against a doctrine, which, after 
all, belongs to the very essence of religion. But to the 
heart, how beautiful is this doctrine ; how natural, how 
probable, how necessary ! How eagerly the heart em- 
braces it ! How it hastens to put it in the rank of its 
most cherished convictions ! And how wretchedly and 
foolishly wise do those appear to it, who, feeling on the 
one hand, that religion without prayer is not religion, 
and on the other, that the bearing of prayer upon their 
destinies is inexplicable, resolve to remain in uncer- 
tainty on the subject, waiting and not praying at all ! 

It is the same with many other mysteries of Chris- 
tianity, or rather with Christianity as a whole. Even 
to those who receive it as a divine religion, and believe 
it intellectually, it is veiled, it is empty, it is dead, so 
long as they do not call the heart to their aid. Among 
sincere believers, there are many who have gone 
around Christianity, a religion of their intellect, as 
around an impenetrable sanctuary, knocking in turn at 
all the doors of that asylum, without finding one open, 
and returning without success to those already tried 
many times, believing and -not believing at the same 
time, Christians by their wishes, pagans by their hopes, 
convinced but not persuaded, enlightened but not con- 
soled. To such I address myself; I appeal to their sin- 
cerity, and ask them, Whence comes it that you believe, 
and as yet have only the responsibilities, not the bless- 
ings, of faith ? How happens it, that you carry your 
faith as a yoke that oppresses and weighs you down, 
not as wings which raise you above your miseries and 
the world ? How comes it, that, in the bosom of that 



THE GOSPEL COMPREHENDED BY THE HEART. 191 

religion you have accepted, you are strangers, exiles, 
and as if out of your natural atmosphere ? How is 
it that you are not at home in your father's house ? 
Let us put the finger upon the wound. It is that your 
heart is not yet touched. The heart of Lydia must be 
opened, before she can understand the things spoken by 
Paul. So also you heart must be opened, in order to 
understand the truths which only the heart can under- 
stand. Or, to use the energetic language of Scripture, 
the heart of flesh must take, in your bosom, the place 
of the heart of stone. 

Alas ! with a conviction firmly established, with an 
orthodoxy the most perfect, how many do we see, 
strangers to true faith, how many sceptical believers, 
how many who have not doubted the truth of the Scrip- 
tures a single day of their life, who read them assidu- 
ously, who know them even by heart, and who, not- 
withstanding all this, do not believe at all ! Ah, it is 
that faith is something else than the product of the in- 
tellect ; it is that faith is love. Knowledge may give 
us convictions ; love alone gives us life. 

The first advice that reason ought to give us, should be 
to refuse reason in everything which does not belong to 
its jurisdiction. But reason is proud, reason is dogmat- 
ic ; it will not submit. What then does our Heavenly 
Father do when he desires to save a soul ? He leaves 
it for a time, to struggle with its speculations, and to 
vex itself with their impotence. When it is weary and 
despairing, when it has acknowledged that it is equally 
incapable of stifling or of satisfying its craving for light, 
he takes advantage of its humiliation ; he lays his hand 
upon that soul, exhausted by its efforts, wounded by its 
falls, and compels it to sue for quarter. Then it hum- 



192 VINET S MISCELLANIES. 

bles itself, submits, groans ; it cries for succor ; it re- 
nounces the claim to know, and desires only to believe ; 
it pretends not to comprehend, it only aspires to live. 
Then the heart commences its functions ; it takes the 
place of reason ; anguished and craving, the heart is 
such as God would have it. It sues for grace, and lo ! 
there is grace ; it asks for aid, and aid comes ; it craves 
salvation, and salvation is given ! On that heart, con- 
fused and miserable, is then bestowed, nay lavished, all 
that was refused to reason, proud and haughty. Its 
poverty enables it to conceive what its wealth kept it 
from knowing. It comprehends with ease, it accepts 
with ardor, the truths which it needs, and without which 
no human soul can enjoy peace or happiness. And 
thus is fulfilled the word of wisdom : " Out of the heart 
proceed the springs of life." 

Will ye come, proud spirits, and demand from such 
an one an account of his faith ? Certainly he will not 
explain to you what is inexplicable ; in this respect he 
will send you away poorly satisfied. But, if he says 
to you, if he can say to you, — I love ! — ought not such a 
response to satisfy you ? If he can say, — I no longer be- 
long to myself, nor to honor, nor to the world ; my meat 
is to do the will of my heavenly Father ; I aspire to eter- 
nal good ; I love, in God, all my brethren, with a cordial 
affection ; I am content to live, I shall be happy to die ; 
henceforth all is harmony within me ; my energies and 
activities, my destiny and desires, my affections and 
thoughts, are all in accordance ; the world, this life, 
and human things are not the mystery which torments 
me, nor the contradiction that causes me to despair ; 
in a word, I am raised to newness of life. If he says, 
if he can say to you all this, and his whole life corrobo- 



THE GOSPEL COMPREHENDED BY THE HEART. 193 

rates his words, ah, then, do not waste on him vain 
reasonings ; try not to refute him ; he has truth, for 
he has life. He touches with his hands, he sees with 
his eyes, he perceives, in some sort, with all his senses, 
a truth which all the arguments in the world could not 
establish with so much certainty, which all the argu- 
ments in the world cannot shake. Does the person who 
enjoys sight need to be told there is light ? Can one 
in good health be persuaded he is sick ? These are ir- 
refragable verities, the proof of which is in himself, nay 
more, of which he is himself the living proof. 

Thus the truths of the gospel have changed his heart ; 
but the Spirit of God must, first of all, have prepared it 
to receive them. Let us not lose sight of these two 
facts : — it is the gospel which renews us, and it is the 
Spirit of God which enables us to receive the gospel 
into our heart. When we have received it, when 
in our heart, lately sick and insane, love has estab- 
lished his immutable empire, that love becomes an 
abundant source of light. By it a thousand obscurities 
of the word are cleared away. Its flame imparts no 
less light than heat. Delightful thought ! the more we 
love, the more we know. Such is the experience of 
the Christian. Do you not wish to feel it, slaves of 
reason, melancholy victims of a knowledge which mis- 
takes its limits and exaggerates its rights ? Ye who 
know, but do not live, will you not ask from God love 
in order to comprehend love, love in order to know, 
love in order to live ? 

O, God, wliom we should never have known hadst 
thou not deigned to discover thyself to us in the light of 
the gospel, complete the great work thou hast begun. 
Give us a heart to understand the truths thou hast re- 

9 



194 VINET S MISCELLANIES. 

vealed ! Let the light of love, shed in our hearts by 
thee, disperse all the obscurities of thy word ! Let thy 
goodness, let thy marvellous wisdom, keep from us no 
other secrets than those which are useless for us to 
know ; teach us by love the most perfect of all wisdom ; 
render the most simple wise in the science of salvation ! 
Thy Spirit, O Lord, is love, as thou thyself art love. 
Diffuse it through the whole earth ; spread, in every 
place, that holy flame; attract all hearts to thyself; 
make of all souls one single soul, in a common senti- 
ment of adoration and devotion ! Lord ! we shall know 
all, when we know how to love ; we shall rejoice in a 
light which is not the product of laborious study, but 
one which sanctifies and consoles ! Then truly shalt 
thou have spoken to us in the gospel. Then shall it 
be seen that thou hast given to us a message of love 
and peace ; and our conviction, cold, sterile, useless, 
shall be changed into a living faith, full of hope, full of 
good fruits. 



FOLLY OF THE TRUTH* 

" We preach Christ crucified, .... to the Greeks foolishness." — 1 Cor. i. 



Christianity has not left to infidelity the satisfac- 
tion of being the first to tax it with folly. It has 
hastened to bring this accusation against itself. It has 
professed the bold design of saving men by a folly. 
Upon this point it has suffered no illusion ; it knew that 
its doctrine would pass for an insane one ; it knew it be- 
fore experience of the fact, before any one had said it ; 
and it went forth, with this folly on its lips, this folly for 
a standard, to the conquest of the world. If, then, it is 
foolish, it is so consciously and voluntarily ; and those 
who reproach it on this account, will, at least, be 
obliged to confess that it has foreseen, and braved their 
reproach. 

Never did so calm a foresight, so just an apprecia- 
tion of obstacles, means and chances, distinguish the 
author of a system or the founder of a religion. Never 
did any one enter so fully into the spirit of his oppo- 
nents, and transport himself so completely from his own 
point of view to theirs. When it is seen in what re- 
spect Christianity judges itself contrary to the world, 

* The word folie is used by French medical writers for insanity ; and 
it is to madness, rather than simple folly, to which our author in this 
discourse refers. — T, 



196 vinet's miscellanies. 

and the world contrary to it, we have an idea of incom- 
patibility so essential and profound, that we cannot 
help asking, with what hope, and so to speak, with what 
right, does such a religion propose itself to the world ; 
and a choice remains only between two suppositions, 
that of an extravagance, absolutely unparalleled, or of a 
secret inspiration and a supernatural power. 

Of course, we should not dream of pretending that 
this characteristic of a doctrine was, by itself, a pre- 
sumption in favor of its truth. Error, too, may have 
the appearance of folly, for error is sometimes a folly, I 
mean in the judgment of men ; for it is ever such in 
the eyes of God. But this we say, that, if religion 
were destitute of such a characteristic, we could not 
presume it to be true. A religion, which should ap- 
pear reasonable to the whole world, could not be the 
true one; in that general assent accorded to it, without 
opposition, I recognize the fact, that God has not spo- 
ken : the seal is not broken, the light has not burst 
forth ; I must still wait. 

This idea itself is not a folly ; and if its truth does 
not strike at first, if it does not present itself as a reve- 
lation of common sense, it is deduced without difficulty 
from other truths which common sense reveals, and 
which no man, unless deprived of this common sense 
itself, dreams of disavowing. Every one, if he will rea- 
son a little, will range himself on the side of this para- 
dox, and will see this strange idea gradually become an 
obvious truth. Every one will acknowledge that true 
religion must, at its first appearance among men, be 
saluted from all sides with that accusation of folly 
which Christianity has so loftily braved. 

Let us leave to philosophers and physicians the task 



FOLLY OF THE TRUTH. 197 

of exactly defining insanity. It has, at least, one 
constant characteristic, that it renders a man unfit 
for human life, taking life, in this instance, only in its 
essential conditions. The madman and the idiot do 
not really form a part of society, to which the weakest, 
the most ignorant, and I will almost say, the most sav- 
age of men are not permitted, in all the force of the 
term, to belong. Insanity, which in other respects 
has no connection with crime, must at least, have 
this in common with it, that it throws us violently out 
of the pale of humanity. It is a monstrosity in the 
sphere of intellect. But as the evidence of such mons- 
trosity is to believe or see something which no man, 
rightly constituted, and healthy in body and mind, be- 
lieves and sees, — since it is necessarily under such an 
aspect that insanity manifests itself, — it follows, that 
wherever this characteristic discovers itself, it awakens 
the idea of insanity. So that even a man who is not 
destitute of any of the conditions which compose our idea 
of humanity, is, nevertheless, for the want of a better 
term, designated a fool, when by his opinions he is found 
alone in the midst of his nation or his age : and if he 
meets with partisans, real or pretended, they share with 
him, so long as their number is small, the same title and 
the same disgrace. 

Not only an opinion which all the world rejects, but 
a hope which no one shares, or a plan with which no 
one associates himself, brings the charge of folly before 
the multitude, against the rash man who has conceived 
it, and who cherishes it. His opinion may seem just, 
and his aim reasonable ; he is a fool only for wishing to 
realize it. His folly lies in believing possible what all the 
world esteems impossible. Nay, he is a fool at a 



198 vinet's miscellanies. 

cheaper rate than even this. If, renouncing hope, he does 
not abandon desire ; if he makes his happiness depend 
upon an end impossible to be attained, or an improve- 
ment impossible to be accomplished ; if in the absence 
of a good which appears to him indispensable, of an 
ideal which has become, as it were, a part of his soul, 
he judges his life lost, and finds no relish in any of the 
joys which it offers to the rest of mankind, though in 
other respects he fulfil all the duties which his condi- 
tion as a man imposes on him, the victim and sport of 
a fixed idea, he is a madman, at least with reference to 
that particular point ; and the respect which others 
feel for him does not hinder them from pronouncing in- 
sane a grief which they do not understand. 

They do not always apply to him this opprobrious 
epithet ; but what they do not say, they think ; what 
they do not proclaim, they permit to be seen. That 
man, they say, is not indeed a fool, but he has a foolish 
notion. For insanity is not necessarily a darkness in 
which the whole soul is enveloped ; it is sometimes only 
a dark spot in a brilliant light. The shadows are more 
or less thick, more or less diffused. There are degrees 
of insanity ; after all, it is insanity. We need not dis- 
pute about a term ; and the world will ever call him 
foolish who desires to be wise all alone. 

In other respects, indeed, the world is willing that one 
should be wise. It says so, at least ; but it does not 
recognize any wisdom contrary to the opinion and prac- 
tice of the majority. It honors principles ; it is willing, 
indeed, that we should regulate ourselves by them ; but 
it might be said, that it really knows none but the au- 
thority of numbers. At least numbers and also time are, 
in its eyes, so strong a presumption of truth, that it 



FOLLY OF THE TRUTH. 199 

rarely gives itself the trouble to examine if one or a few 
individuals may not be right in opposition to all ; and it 
appears as if it would compel the truth which has noth- 
ing in common with space and time, to derive itself en- 
tirely from space and time. 

This prepossession is not without some foundation. 
It is not natural to suppose that truth was made to be 
the portion of a small number. It was a part, and the 
best part of the heritage of humanity ; it was not to lie 
dormant for ages, to awaken at a given moment ; nor 
to lose itself at a distance from the spirit of humanity, 
to be recovered in the thoughts of some favored individ- 
ual. The truth, necessary to all, was to be within the 
reach of all, and present itself unceasingly to the mind 
of all. Such was the condition of truth, in the healthy, 
and regular condition of human nature. But those who 
derive truth from the opinion of the majority, either do 
not believe that man has departed from that primitive 
state, or they forget the fact ; or, finally, they believe in 
the fall, without believing its principal consequences. 
They do not reflect that one of its first consequences 
must be the stupefaction of the moral sense, and the ob- 
scuration of our natural light. They do not consider 
that the knowledge which depends upon a certain state 
of the soul, changes with that very state, and that a con- 
science which has become dormant permits all kinds of 
error to enter the mind. They do not perceive, that 
our soul is not a mirror, in which truth is reflected by 
itself, but an opaque surface, on which it has always to 
be graven afresh ; that, since the fall, faith is so little 
independent of the will, that, on the contrary, the will 
is a condition and an element of faith ; that truth has no 
longer an irresistible evidence, nor, consequently, the 



200 vinet's miscellanies. 

power of making the same impressions on the minds of 
all, and subjecting them at once to its sway. On the 
other hand, they do not see that humanity, having been 
corrupted at its source, it is with great difficulty that 
certain elementary principles, necessary to the existence 
of society, are preserved, and still less, we must ac- 
knowledge it, preserved as true, as well as necessary. 
They do not remind themselves of the fact, that certain 
errors, adapted to all, have been able easily to enter the 
world by a door so poorly guarded as that of the heart, 
there to usurp authority, to establish themselves on a 
respectable footing, to become the rule of conduct and 
the test of morals. Will they deny that there have been 
universal errors ? What will they say of slavery, that 
appalling evil, for which, during ages, no one had the 
slightest shame or remorse, which has not retired, ex- 
cept step by step, before the advancing light of Chris- 
tianity, and which, O mournful condition of human 
nature ! some civilized men, who believe in Jesus 
Christ,, yet defend ? When these errors come to be 
torn from the human mind, it is from the roots, it is for- 
ever ; the conscience of humanity never restores any 
of its conquests. But such errors have reigned ; ages 
have transmitted them intact and vital ; and if univer- 
sal consent is the seal of truth, they are as irrefragably 
true, as any of the truths which have universal consent 
for their basis. Are you surprised at this ? Be appalled, 
but do not be surprised ; for if the fall of man has not 
had these consequences, I am ignorant of what conse- 
quences it could have, and should be reduced to the 
necessity of deeming it a pure fiction, or of all truths the 
most insignificant and powerless. 

Many reason upon this subject as if nothing had hap- 



FOLLY OF THE TRUTH. 201 

pened, since the day when God, looking upon his work, 
saw that what he had made was good. They speak of 
truth as if its condition amongst us were always the same. 
They love to represent it, enveloping and accompany- 
ing humanity, as the atmosphere envelops and accom- 
panies our earth, in its journey through the heavens. 
But it is not so ; truth is not attached to our mind, as 
the atmosphere to the globe we inhabit. Truth is a 
suppliant, who, standing before the threshold, is forever 
pressing towards the hearth, from which sin has banished 
it. As we pass and re-pass before that door, which it 
never quits, that majestic and mournful figure fixes for 
a moment our distracted attention. Each time it awa- 
kens in our memory I know not what dim recollections 
of order, glory, and happiness ; but we pass, and the 
impression vanishes. We have not been able entirely 
to repudiate the truth ; we still retain some unconnected 
fragments of it ; what of its light our enfeebled eye can 
bear, what of it is proportioned to our condition. The 
rest we reject or disfigure, so as to render it difficult of 
recognition, while we retain, — which is one of our mis- 
fortunes — the names of things we no longer possess. 
Moral and social truth is like one of those monumental 
inscriptions* over which the whole community pass as 
they go to their business, and which every day become 
more and more defaced ; until some friendly chisel is 
applied to deepen the lines in that worn-out stone, so 
that every one is forced to perceive and to read it. 
That chisel is in the hands of a small number of men, 
who perseveringly remain prostrate before that ancient 
inscription, at the risk of being dashed upon the pave- 

* The monumental inscriptions here referred to, are supposed to bo 
level with the ground. — T. 

9* 



202 

merit, and trampled under the heedless feet of the pass- 
ers-by ; in other words, this truth dropped into oblivion, 
that duty fallen into disuse, finds a witness in the person 
of some man who has not believed, without any other 
consideration, that all the world are right, simply and 
solely because it is all the world. 

The strange things which that strange man says, and 
which some other repeats after him, will not fail to be 
believed sooner or later, and finally become the univer- 
sal opinion. And why ? Because truth is truth ; be- 
cause it corresponds to everything, satisfies everything ; 
because, both in general and in detail, it is better adapted 
to us than error ; because, bound up by the most inti- 
mate relations, with all the order in the universe, it has 
in our interests and wants a thousand involuntary advo- 
cates ; because everything demands it, everything cries 
after it ; because error exhausts and degrades itself; 
because falsehood, which at first appeared to benefit all, 
has ended by injuring all ; so that truth sits down in its 
place, vacant, as it were, for the want of a suitable heir. 
Enemies concur with friends, obstacles with means, to 
the production of that unexpected result. Combinations 
of which it is impossible to give account, and of which 
God only has the secret, secure that victory. But con- 
science is not a stranger here ; for there is within us, 
whatever we do, a witness to the truth, a witness timid 
and slow, but which a superior force drags from its re- 
treat, and at last compels to speak. It is thus that truths 
the most combated, and, at first, sustained by organs the 
most despised, end by becoming, in their turn, popular 
convictions. This is our hope with reference to that 
truth which includes all truths, or in the bosom of which 
they are all formed anew. We firmly believe, conform- 



FOLLY OF THE TRUTH. 203 

ably to the divine promise, that a time will come, when 
the gospel of Jesus Christ, if not loved by all, will at 
least be believed and professed by all. 

This, however, does not prevent all such truths from 
being combated, and their first witnesses from passing 
for madmen. At the head of each of those movements 
which have promoted the elevation of the human race, 
what do you see ? In the estimation of the world, mad- 
men. And the contempt they have attracted by their 
folly, has always been proportioned to the grandeur of 
their enterprise, and the generosity of their intentions. 
The true heroes of humanity have always been crowned 
by that insulting epithet. And the man, who to-day in 
a pious enthusiasm, or yet more, to please the world, 
celebrates those men whose glory lies in having dared 
to displease the world, would, during their life, have 
perhaps been associated with their persecutors. He 
honors them, not because they are not worthy of honor, 
but because he sees them honored. His fathers have 
killed the prophets, and he their son, subdued by uni- 
versal admiration, builds the tombs of the prophets. 

The world demands, — and it is always by a forget- 
fulness of the condition into which we are fallen that it 
does so, — that truth should present itself with the ad- 
vantage of simplicity and clearness. Many wish to 
make this a condition of truth ; they wish to recognize 
it by this mark. That is all very well ! But in order 
that it may appear simple, let us first have an eye sim- 
ple like it. Is it the fault of truth, if our heart being di- 
vided, our intellect should be divided also, and that the 
axioms of man innocent, are the problems of man 
fallen 1 But without insisting on this reply, which 
may not perhaps be received by those who do not be- 



204 VINET'S MISCELLANIES. 

lieve in the first fall, let us give another, which may be 
within view and reach of all. If we make clearness 
and simplicity the test of truth, we run the risk, in 
many cases, of embracing error instead of truth; for 
error, in most instances, has over truth the advan- 
tage of simplicity. Error, very often, has nothing to 
do but to suppress one of the elements of a question, to 
procure for it, by that arbitrary suppression, a similitude 
of unity. Every truth, in the actual condition of hu- 
man nature, is composed of two terms, which must be 
harmonized, and which does not become truth in our 
minds, but by their reconciliation.* There are always 

* The reference here is obviously to that principle of the Baconian 
philosophy, so clearly developed in the Novum Organum, by "which all 
facts and truths are to be investigated, on what Bacon calls their nega- 
tive and affirmative sides. Things are often not "what they seem. All 
questions have two aspects ; and negative instances are uniformly to be 
reconciled to positive, in order that truth may be evolved and estab- 
lished. Take, for example, the principle or fact of gravitation, by 
■which all bodies tend to their centre. This is proved by innumerable facts. 
But many things seem opposed to it, especially the fact that the heav- 
enly bodies are actually thrown out from the centre of gravitation by 
the " centrifugal force," so that two opposing forces are constantly striving 
■with each other. This constitutes the negative side of the question, and 
must be shown to be in harmony "with the facts on the affirmative side. 
The earth revolves around the sun ; but the sun appears to revolve around 
the earth ; it seems to rise and set while the earth appears stationary. 
These facts must be harmonized, by reference to a single principle, or 
class of principles, in "which they all unite. 

In moral or spiritual truths, the fact under consideration is still more 
obvious. Is man a spiritual and immortal being ? This is generally 
conceded, and the proof is satisfactory. But many facts seem opposed 
to it. For man sleeps, he decays, he loses his reason, he dies. This is 
the negative side of the question, and must be shown to be in harmony 
with the other, before the truth can be established. God is good and 
merciful. This is the affirmative side of a most important fact. But 
many things seem opposed to it, such as the universal ignorance and 



FOLLY OF THE TRUTH. 205 

two elements to be reduced to a single one, either by 
the conciliation or the suppression of one of them. The 
first step towards the truth, is to recognize the exist- 
ence of two elements ; the second is to re-unite, with- 
out destroying them. Now, in what position in refer- 
ence to these are the greater part of sincere and thought- 
ful men ; or, to speak more properly, in what posi- 
tion is humanity ? In the first ; that is to say, it recog- 
nizes this duality. The human mind, in general, is not 
in that state of simplicity which some would make the 
characteristic and mark of truth. Who, then, will ap- 

wretchedness of man, the apparent disorders in the natural and moral 
worlds, which are permitted, if not inflicted, by the Divine Being. The 
two sides of the question, then, must be reconciled, by the intervention 
of some other principle or fact, such as the justice of God, the free- 
agency of man, or the indissoluble connection between sin and misery. 
This duality of truth, if it may be so called, is, if possible, still more ob 
vious in revelation. It is affirmed, for example, that Jesus Christ is 
God ; but he is also spoken of as a man, with all the feelings and in- 
firmities of man. He loves, he suffers, he dies. In one case he acts the 
sovereign, in another the servant. Now he wields the energies of om- 
nipotence. Anon he groans beneath the pressure of calamity. Now 
he lies in the grave guarded by Roman soldiers, then he breaks the 
bands of death, and ascends " far above all principality, and power, and 
might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this 
world, but also in that which is to come." Where, then, is the fact, the 
consideration, or the principle, which must harmonize these two classes 
of opposing facts, the negative and positive sides of the problem relative 
to the mystery of Christ ? Is it not found in the fact, that Jesus is 
both God and man, or, as the New Testament expresses it, " God man- 
ifest in the flesh ?" If this can be shown, then the two terms of the 
question are reconciled, and the truth in the case is established. 

In the higher philosophy, we see the same duality appearing, in a 
more precise and striking form. The questions pertaining to subject 
and object matter and mind, finite and infinite, absolute and conditioned, 
God and the universe, are all to be resolved by the " conciliation of ap- 
parent contradictions," — T. 



206 vinet's miscellanies. 

propriate to themselves this mark and characteristic ? 
Those, doubtless, who will rid themselves of one of the 
elements of the question, or one of the parts of the 
truth, that they may occupy their attention only with 
one. Hence, it is their opinion only which will appear 
simple ; and, in a certain sense, it will be so in reality. 
And since this simplicity flatters at once the indolence 
and impatience of the human mind, and since, on the 
other hand, the mind ever carries within it the sentiment 
that there is no truth but in unity, man, dazzled with 
that false and artificial unity, will eagerly abandon him- 
self to opinions which present it to him, and will main- 
tain them until constrained to acknowledge their false- 
ness in their consequences, which violate at once his 
own nature, and the nature of things. 

What has given success to the most pernicious er- 
rors, whether in matters of religion or social order ? 
Their great air of simplicity. What has been alleged 
in their favor? Common sense. The vulgar, the 
whole world, indeed, permits itself to be caught by this 
bait. But human life obstinately refuses to settle down 
upon such a basis. Common opinion originates no doc- 
trine with which man can re'main satisfied. The ideas to 
which he is obliged to remount in order to give dignity 
to his life, possess much more the character of para- 
doxes than of common sense notions. Doubtless, there 
was a time when man obtained them by immediate in- 
tuition, and not through the intervention of reflection ; 
because such ideas were not distinguished from his 
very existence.* But that time is no more ; the pure 
light is broken in the prism of sin ; the power of collect- 

* They formed a part of himself. He acted upon them naturally and 
spontaneously. His mind was clear, and his heart innocent — T. 



FOLLY OF THE TRUTH. 207 

ing the scattered rays is not within us ; and common 
sense has not filled the place of intuition. If man yet 
accomplishes great and sublime things in the world, it 
is not under the inspiration of common opinion, but 
under some glimmering of primitive light ; nor is it to 
common opinion they are ascribed, for it is in its name 
they are condemned. In the eyes of the mass, self- 
denial, humility and martyrdom are not common sense. 
Thus have I called attention to a fact, and given an 
explanation 01 it. It is, that a general contempt has 
often covered those who have recalled to the notice of 
men some principle of eternal rectitude, some truth es- 
sential to the elevation of human nature ; and the 
explanation I have given of it is, the fall. Let us, if 
you please, for the present, leave the explanation, and 
confine ourselves to the fact. We ask only that it be 
affirmed or denied. But we can scarcely believe that 
any one will deny it. For, that certain individual 
opinions, which have subsequently become universal, 
have caused their first partisans to be treated as mad- 
men or criminals, who can wish to dispute ? And yet 
to maintain that these opinions, now become universal, 
were, after all, errors, wouW argue a disposition of 
mind, and even a state of moral feeling, which we are 
not permitted to anticipate. I remind you only that 
torture, slavery, the degradation of the female sex, and 
compulsion in matters of religion, have existed amongst 
us as truths of public recognition, and almost as arti- 
cles of faith ; and that there is a country, where the 
man who should wish to prevent widows from burning 
themselves with the dead bodies of their husbands, 
would be considered a madman or an infidel. Suppose, 
then, that the fact in question is admitted by all our 



208 vinet's miscellanies. 

readers ; let us occupy ourselves only with appreci- 
ating its nature. 

If the defenders of the most necessary, and, in the pres- 
ent day, the most evident truths, have, in all epochs and 
in all countries, gone by the name of fools ; if they have 
been hated, despised, and persecuted ; if the truth of 
which they were the messengers has not penetrated, ex- 
cept slowly, and by a sanguinary road, into common 
opinion, laws, and manners ; if it had to submit to that 
exile of ages in order to reach, as we have said, from 
the threshold to the hearth, what, we ask, is the condition 
of truth on the earth, and the position of man with ref- 
erence to it ? We say nothing of the fall ; let us admit 
that man has not fallen ; let us not ask what he might 
have been formerly ; let us look only at what he is at 
present, that is, since the remotest era to which we can 
go back by the aid of historical monuments. What is 
the disposition of a being respecting the truth who at 
first rejects it ; who despises those who proclaim it ; 
who, when he accepts it, submits to it rather than ac- 
cepts it ; who receives it only by little and little, and in 
a shattered and fragmentary state ; who finally attaches 
himself to it, I acknowledge, and does not abandon it, 
but, like a husband who, during long years, has shown 
himself stupidly insensible to the virtues of his wife, and 
finally yields only to the inconceivable obstinacy of a 
patience and an affection almost superhuman. 

That effort, that sanguinary struggle, w T ith which 
humanity, wrestling, so to speak, against itself, seizes, 
one by one, the most necessary truths ; the bad grace 
with which it is done, and the incapacity of not doing 
otherwise, indicate two things at once ; the first, that 
man cannot do without the truth ; the second, that he 



FOLLY OF THE TRUTH. 209 

is not in fellowship with the truth. But truth is one ; 
and all those truths successively discovered are only 
parts, or diverse applications of it. All the truths which 
are sometimes called principles are the consequences 
of a first principle. That principle includes all, unites 
all ; it is from this source they derive their evidence, 
their life, their immortality. That principle is the first 
truth which must be honored, the first light that must be 
kindled. It will itself kindle all extinguished truths, 
shed over them an equal radiance, and nourish all their 
scattered lamps with a divine oil, the source of which 
is inexhaustible, because it is divine. We must have a 
key to all problems, a primary idea, by means of which 
all else may be known ; truth is one, because man is 
one ; it is one, or it is nothing. 

We here say nothing new. This is the very idea 
which the human mind has best preserved of its ancient 
heritage. It has always endeavored to attach all its 
thoughts, all its life, to one grand and unique principle. 
This effort has given birth to all religions ; for that es- 
sential principle could be nothing but God ; and the 
great question at issue has been to form an idea of God. 
But man has never failed to make God after his own 
image, and his various religions have never surpassed 
himself ; for if by these he imposes on himself acts and 
privations which he would not otherwise impose, such 
toils being of his own choice, do not raise him above 
himself. Hence these religions do not change the prin- 
ciple of his inner life ; they subject him to an external 
sway, only to leave him free at heart ; in a word, they 
do not substitute the new man for the old. And since 
they take man at a given point in space and duration, 
they are necessarily temporary, and retire before a new 



210 vinet's miscellanies. 

degree of culture and a new form of civilization. But 
at their first appearance, however absurd they may be, 
they are by no means taxed with folly ; because they are 
only a form given to the moral condition of all, — a form 
which is itself the result of time, place, and traditions ; 
it is born and grows up with the people ; it is itself as 
appropriate and natural as their manners ; and they will 
take care not to accuse of extravagance their own work, 
and their own thought. 

But let a doctrine present itself, which, so far from 
being formed in the image of man as he is, appears, on 
the contrary, formed in the image of man as he is not ; 
a doctrine which compels man to surpass himself, and 
which changes the character, not of a particular class, 
or of a single energy or faculty, but of the entire human 
life ; a doctrine which places the object of humanity 
higher than it is placed by any individual, or by man- 
kind generally, how, think you, will it be received ? 
What ! will the particular applications of the principle 
cost those who proposed it contempt and insult, and the 
very principle of all these applications, that which in- 
cludes them all, and discovers many others like them, not 
bring upon its defenders insult and contempt ? What ! 
hate the consequences ! and yet not hate the principle 
which sanctions them, enforces them, and will contin- 
ually give rise to others of a similar kind ? We do not 
think so. That principle will not escape hatred, unless 
by contempt, or rather it will suffer both by turns ; the 
hatred of those who cannot help suspecting its truth ; 
the contempt of others who, looking on it only as a 
prejudice different from their own, will not believe it 
formidable enough to deserve their hatred. Let us 
rather say, that both of them will be forced to regard it 



FOLLY OF THE TRUTH. 211 

as a folly. For what is that principle, which has crea- 
ted, so to speak, another human nature ? It cannot be 
an abstraction ; it must be a fact. It must be a fact of 
a new order, because ordinary facts would leave us in 
our ordinary condition. It is, then, a divine fact ; for 
to God only does it belong to create a fact of a new 
order. Hence it is a fact which we could not foresee. 
And since we could not foresee it, we cannot compre- 
hend it. It is not a natural but a supernatural fact ; it 
is a miracle ; it is a folly. Indeed, it is not a religion 
such as that which man makes for himself. True re- 
ligion is a revelation of God ; and if God has spoken, 
what he has said is necessarily a folly to those who do 
not believe. Those, too, who convey this revelation, or 
relate this fact, or announce this message, will excite in 
the world an immense surprise ; will revolt the wise, 
alarm the timid, irritate the powerful. They will see 
let loose against them the ignorant as well as the wise ; 
for it is not necessary to be learned in order to discern 
folly. As to the effects which this fact has produced 
upon them, and the internal revolution they have un- 
dergone, if they speak of them, they will not be believed ; 
their most certain experiences will appear but as vain 
fancies. And since the world do not comprehend their 
principles, neither will they comprehend their conduct ; 
they will complain of them as enthusiasts ; they will 
ridicule them as mystics, until that power of truth, of 
which we have spoken, has acted upon the most rebel- 
lious spirits, subdued contempt, and finally forced the 
wisest to confess and to bless that folly. 

The history I have just recounted is that of the gos- 
pel. Christian truth, simply because it was the truth, 
must, at its first appearance, have had all the world 



212 vinet's miscellanies. 

against it. It has become, externally, the religion of 
nations ; and governments have done themselves the 
honor to protect it, or to be protected by it. It would, 
indeed, be difficult to say, with precision, what the na- 
tions have adopted under the name of the Christian re- 
ligion. They never believe with the same faith as 
individuals. A nation has its manner of being Christian, 
just as an individual has his. One must be a Christian 
according to the standard of the world, not to be a fool 
in its judgment. The world has abstracted from Chris- 
tianity a part of its folly ; it has rendered it almost wise, 
at least, in practice ; so that, even in the midst of a 
Christian nation, the Christian who accepts all that 
folly, passes for a foolish man. It is not, then, necessary 
to go amongst the Mussulmans, or the followers of 
Budh, to hear ourselves denominated insane on account 
of Christianity ; the occasion will never be wanting in 
Christendom, and even in the bosom of a people the 
most attached to the worship of their fathers. The folly 
of the cross will always spring from the book of the 
gospel ; it will always break out in the profession and 
conduct of those who have accepted it earnestly and 
without restriction. The Christian, consequently, will 
always be tempted to dissemble his faith ; and it will 
therefore ever be one of his duties to brave popular con- 
tempt, and confess himself tainted with that sublime 
folly. 

But if any one supposes that the whole matter at 
issue turns on confessing his faith in Christ once for all, 
he is greatly mistaken. Christianity is something more 
than an assemblage of dogmas : it is especially the prin- 
ciple of a new life. The folly of the Christian does not 
always consist in the doctrines he adopts. It consists 



FOLLY OF THE TRUTH. 213 

more, much more, in the maxims which serve to regu- 
late his conduct. He is foolish in practice, as well as 
in theory. He separates himself from other men in a 
thousand ways, the greater part of which, I allow, are 
not visible, but remain secret between himself and God. 
But it is impossible that this separation should not some- 
times be obvious and public ; if he does not seek occa- 
sions for it, it is certain he will not avoid them. The 
same Christianity which teaches him maxims incon- 
ceivable to the rest of the world, teaches him to follow 
them without fear or dissimulation. Such courage is 
the first law and the first mark of a true Christian. 
Every Christian is, first of all, a witness ; every witness 
is, by anticipation, a martyr. 

Christianity has effected this revolution in the world. 
It has given to truth a dignity independent of time and 
numbers. It has required that truth should be believed 
and respected for itself. It has claimed that every one 
should be able to judge of its merits ; that the most ig- 
norant and the most isolated should find in himself suf- 
ficient reasons to believe ; that in order to decide 
regarding it, he should not inquire if others around him 
believe it, but that he should be ready, when occasion 
requires, to be alone in his opinion, and to persist in it. 
So many men make no use of their conscience ; so 
many who practise a duty would not even suspect that 
it was a duty, if they found that opinion prevalent ; so 
many who have no doubt respecting a duty do not ex- 
pect to recognize and discharge it until they see it per- 
formed by those of their fellow-men in whom they have 
the greatest confidence ! They believe so much in man, 
so much in numbers, so much in antiquity, and so little 
in truth ! But Christianity was designed to produce a 



214 vinet's miscellanies. 

race of men who should believe in truth, not in num- 
bers, nor in years, nor in force, — men, consequently, 
who should be ready to pass for fools. 

O, then, let us daily ask God to form around us an 
immense void, in which we shall see nothing but Him, 
— a profound silence, in which we shall hear nothing 
but Him ! Let us beseech Him to raise our souls to an 
elevation, where fear of the judgments of the world shall 
not reach us ; where the world itself shall disappear and 
sink away beneath ! Let us entreat Him to envelop 
us in his radiance, and inspire us with the holy folly of 
his gospel, and especially, to penetrate our souls with a 
love " to him that hath loved us," so intense and domi- 
nant, that it would cost us more to descend from that 
height to the world, than it has cost us to ascend thither 
from the world. Let us not only pray without ceasing, 
but let us unceasingly watch, unceasingly strive ; — no 
means, no effort is too much to disengage us from the 
restraints of worldly wisdom, to make us die to that vain 
wisdom, and enable us to taste, in the bosom of God, 
the plenitude of truth, and the plenitude of life. 



A CHAMCTEKISTIC OF THE GOSPEL. 



" And I saw another angel fly in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gos- 
pel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth, and to every nation, and kindred, 
and tongue, and people."— Rev. xiv. 6. 



Among sceptics who resist with the greatest pertina- 
city the arguments of the defenders of Christianity, 
there are none, doubtless, who would not be ready to 
declare, that a sensible proof, an authentic miracle, 
would not find them incorrigible. Show us, they will 
say to you, what St. John is said to tfave seen, " an an- 
gel flying in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting 
gospel to preach to them that dwell on the earth, and to 
every nation, and tribe, and tongue, and people," and 
we shall be converted. This is to promise what is be- 
yond their power ; miracles do not convert ; the sight 
of them can only convince the understanding, the heart 
needs that demonstration of power which belongs only 
to the Spirit of God. But if miracles, clear and well- 
attested, are capable of producing on the mind an im- 
pression which predisposes it to receive the message of 
salvation, let sceptics cease to demand the vision of St. 
John ; they have something of still greater value ; that 
vision is an image of which they have the reality. 
They can, as well as St. John, and in some sense, better 
than he, see that angel who bears through the heavens 
the everlasting gospel to those that dwell on the earth. 



216 vinet's miscellanies. 

I mean, that they can discover in Christianity a charac- 
ter of perpetuity and universality, as striking at least to 
the reason, as the sight of an angel flying in the expanse 
of heaven, would be to the eyes and the imagination. 
If they require a miracle, here is one. For to what will 
they give the name of a miracle, if they refuse it to a 
fact unique in its kind, inconceivable in its production, 
contrary to all probabilities, inaccessible to all induction, 
and which, before seeing it realized, every one would 
have judged impossible ? Let them lend us such atten- 
tion as the subject demands, and we shall hope that the 
facts w~e are about to present will make such an im- 
pression on them, as will induce them to extend their 
investigations, and inform themselves more thoroughly 
respecting the gospel. 

This is the question we propose for discussion. Is it 
in the nature of things that a doctrine, the principal 
ideas of which are not susceptible of being proved, still 
less discovered by mere reason, should live in all times, 
and be introduced among all nations ; and not only so, 
but should become, in all times and in all nations, the 
vivifying principle of morality, and the beneficent aux- 
iliary of the progress of the human mind ? 

Have the goodness to reply ; but recollect, that the 
examples you shall cite must want none of the condi- 
tions enumerated in my question. The doctrine under 
consideration is one which can neither be demonstrated, 
nor discovered by reason. It is one capable of embra- 
cing all times and all nations. It is one which takes the 
principal direction of the conduct of those who embrace 
it. It is one favorable to the progress of the human 
mind, and the onward march of civilization ; — four con- 
ditions, each of which is essential. 



A CHARACTERISTIC OF THE GOSPEL. 217 

I see, indeed, a doctrine common to all times, and all 
nations, that of the existence of God, and the immortal- 
ity of the soul ; two inseparable truths, the union of 
which forms what is called natural religion. It is nat- 
ural, in fact, because nature appears everywhere to have 
taught its elements to the human soul. It is everywhere 
one of the first products of reason, one of the first results 
of its intellectual activity. It is the conclusion of a 
reasoning so simple and so rapid, that the reasoning, so 
to speak, disappears, and the soul appears to obtain it 
by intuition. It is universal, if you please, because it 
is natural. It is not, however, a natural, but a positive 
religion, in which we demand this character of univer- 
sality.* As soon as natural religion professes to clothe 
itself in determined forms, unanimity ceases, no human 
power can establish it. Natural religion, the instant it 
becomes positive, ceases to be capable of being the re- 
ligion of the human race.f 

* By a positive religion, the author means one which is clothed in set 
forms, which consists of specific articles, — or what, in theological phrase, 
is sometimes called dogmatic. 

f When Robespierre, who, with all his enormities, had some political 
sagacity, saw the havoc which atheism was working in France, he in- 
duced the Convention, which had abolished all forms of religion, to re- 
store the doctrines of the existence of a Supreme Being, and of the im- 
mortality of the soul. The reign of absolute infidelity, and the worship 
of reason, in the person of a beautiful but lewd woman, brought from 
one of the brothels of Paris, was of short duration. But deism, in a 
positive form, could not be established by all the efforts of the govern- 
ment, backed by the philosophers. The theophilanthropists, as they 
called themselves, aided by the public funds, opened some fifteen or 
twenty churches, delivered orations, and sang hymns, in honor of the 
Deity, and the immortality of the soul, but the attendance became less 
and less, and the interest, even of those who were most enthusiastic in 
the project, gradually declined. So that, by the end of 1-795, scarcely a 
vestige of an organized system of religious belief and worship remained 

10 



218 vinet's miscellanies, 

But it will be said, if a positive religion cannot be 
universal, at least it may regain on the side of time 
what it loses on the side of space. Suppose this grant- 
ed ; but it must be acknowledged, that it is only half 
of the condition we have proposed. We have not 
spoken of all times only, but of all places ; so that after 
we have been shown a positive religion, mistress of a 
corner of the globe, from the origin of the world till now, 
we should have a right to reject such an example. We 
accept it, nevertheless, by way of accommodation, and 
for want of a better. There are religious doctrines of 
an amazing antiquity. With some variations in the 
details, the elementary principles are permanent, and 
these appear unchangeable, as the physical constitution 
of the nation that professes them, immovable as the 
soil that bears them. If tbey are destitute of universal- 
ity, perpetuity ought, in a certain sense, to be accorded 
to them. But are they competent, as I have required, 
to serve as a moral force ; and are they favorable to the 
natural and progressive development of the human race ? 
No ; some of them have no harmony with life ; others 
pervert the heart, and the social relations ; and all of 
them chain the mind in immovable forms. All present 
the phenomenon of a people, who, surprised, as one 
might believe, by a sudden congelation, preserve in the 
most advanced periods of their existence, the attitude, 
manners, opinions, costume, institutions, language, in a 
word, the whole manner of life, in the midst of which 
they were seized by that sudden catalepsy. If, on the 

in France. The whole scheme was abandoned as hopeless. No ! Deism 
cannot be established as a positive religion. It fails to meet the wants 
of the human soul ; it gives no assurance of the divine favor, and sup- 
plies no pledge of a blessed immortality, — T. 



A CHARACTERISTIC OF THE GOSPEL. 219 

other hand, any one claims that it is the spirit of the 
people that has determined their faith, and that their 
manners have made their religion, then this religion is 
not such as we have required, namely, a doctrine capa- 
ble of influencing the life, and determining the conduct. 

In going over the different known religions which di- 
vide the nations, we shall find none that meets all the 
conditions we have laid down. Mohammedism, besides 
owing its progress to the power of the sword, fails to 
favor the progressive advancement of the human mind, 
nay more, represses it. It is not suited to penetrate into 
all countries, because it necessarily carries along with 
it polygamy and despotism, antagonisms of civilization. 
The religion of Hindostan fails to be moral, and is un- 
favorable to culture and liberty ; everywhere it would 
need its own earth and sky, for which alone it is made. 
Universality is equally wanting to the Jewish religion ; 
for it does not desire it, nay more, repels it. It is a re- 
ligion entirely national and local ; beyond Palestine it 
is exiled. The deficiency which exists in all the reli- 
gions we have just named, exists also in all others. 
They want universality, perpetuity, morality, and sym- 
pathy with progress. 

Such already is the answer to the question we have 
proposed ; for no positive religion is found which has 
united all the conditions enumerated. We may say, 
with some degree of confidence, that such a thing is not 
possible. If it were, would it not have happened ? And 
if it has not happened, will it ever happen ? 

But even in consulting the nature of things, inde- 
pendent of the teachings of history, the same answer 
will be obtained. No man can give a religion to hu- 
manity. If natural religion be referred to, it is nature 



220 vinet's miscellanies. 

that gives it ; and all that a man can do is to give form 
to its dogmas, by reducing its teachings to order ; he 
can only restore to humanity what he has received from 
it. But, is it a positive religion which is referred to ; 
one, I mean, the dogmas of which human reason could 
not, of itself, have discovered? Then, I ask, what ele- 
vation of heart, of imagination, of reason, what stretch 
of genius, what wondrous divination, are supposed to 
belong to a man, to admit that the dogmas of his inven- 
tion, the dogmas which nature has not given, shall be 
received in all countries, shall preserve their adaptation 
in all times, shall be applicable to all the conditions of 
humanity and of society, in a word, shall be able to con- 
stitute, and shall actually constitute, the religion of the 
human race ! 

It is with some degree of inconsiderateness that some 
men are spoken of as advancing beyond their age, and 
impressing their own individual character upon genera- 
tions. These are, most of the time, men who have, 
better than others, understood, reduced into forms more 
precise, and expressed with greater energy, the domi- 
nant opinions of their era. They have proved what 
their age carried in its bosom. They have concentra- 
ted, in the burning-glass of their genius, the rays of truth, 
which, scattered in the world, have not yet been able to 
set it on fire. But their genius, the faithful and power- 
ful expression of a time and a country which have made 
them what they are, cannot be as vast as the genius of 
humanity. Men have done the work of men, partial, 
relative, limited. But let an individual, isolating him- 
self from his country, from his time, nay more, from his 
individuality, divine the fact, the idea, the doctrine 
which shall renew, convert, and vivify mankind in all 



A CHARACTERISTIC OF THE GOSPEL. 221 

times and in all places, — such an one is not a man, he 
is a God ! 

Observe particularly that I do not require that his re- 
ligion shall become, in fact, the religion of all times, of 
all places, and of all men. In the first instance, he must 
have time to establish it ; and we do not claim that at 
the beginning of its career it shall conquer the whole 
world. Further, we have not all time before us ; and 
inasmuch as the future fate of the world cannot be fully 
ascertained, we are not able to say with precision that 
a thing is of all time. Finally, all true religion supposes 
freedom, and freedom supposes the possibility of resist- 
ance on the part of individuals. We shall demand only, 
and the matter must be thoroughly understood, that a 
sufficient number of experiments have proved that the 
doctrine in question is such that no climate, no degree 
of culture, no form of politics, no circumstances of time 
or place, no physical or moral constitution, are a barrier 
to it, a fatal limit which it cannot pass ; or, to express 
ourselves more briefly, that it correspond to the univer- 
sal and permanent wants of humanity, independent of 
all accidental, temporary, and local circumstances. 

If there is a religion of God upon the earth, it ought 
to have this character of universality and perpetuity. 
For who can doubt that the love of God embraces all 
mankind ; or suppose that he could not speak to all 
mankind ? In such a case, God cannot have in view 
one time, one country, one people only, but all who pos- 
sess the heart of humanity. When he speaks, it is for 
the whole human race. Should it please him to distin- 
guish one nation among the nations of the earth, it 
would yet be for the sake of the human family. What 
he might say to that people in particular would not have 



222 vinet's miscellanies. 

an infinite and eternal range ; that alone would be in- 
vested with such a character, which, through that sep- 
arate nation, would be addressed to universal humanity. 
His revelation would not constitute the fleeting exist- 
ence of one nation, except, by this means, to form a 
people taken out of all the nations of the earth, a spirit- 
ual people, a nation of holy souls. 

We return, then, to the proposition, and say : If such 
a religion exists, it must be from God. It is on this 
ground, that is to say, its universality, that we have al- 
ready acknowledged natural religion to be from him. 
But if, besides natural religion, there is in the world a 
positive religion, invested with the character we have in 
view, we maintain that it is also from God. Because it 
belongs to God alone to form an adequate conception of 
man, whom he has made, and meet the wants of his en- 
tire nature ; because, in consequence of this, God only 
knows how to speak to man ; because he is confined to 
no places, and restricted by no circumstances. And if 
the arbitrary appearance of the principles of a positive 
religion arrests our attention, let us reflect that what is 
necessary for God, and a consequence of his nature, may 
very well appear arbitrary to us ; and that what is 
strange and unexpected in his revelations, is not less the 
necessary and indispensable result of his perfections, 
the faithful and spontaneous imprint of his character 
and relations to the world. 

Let us, then, hold for certain, that if there is in the 
world a positive religion, which, fitted to control the 
life, and favorable to the progressive advancement of 
the human mind, finds no limits in any circumstances 
of time and place, such a religion is from God. 



A CHARACTERISTIC OF THE GOSPEL. 223 

This being settled, let us inquire, if there is such a 
religion. 

A little more than eighteen hundred years ago, a man 
appeared in an obscure corner of the world. I do not 
say, that a long succession of predictions had announced 
the advent of this man ; that a long train of miracles 
had marked, with a divine seal, the nation from which 
he was to spring, and the word itself which announced 
him ; that from the heights of a far distant future he had 
projected his shadow to the feet of our first parents ex- 
iled from Paradise ; in a word, that he was encircled 
and authenticated by an imposing array of proofs. I 
only say that he preached a religion. It is not natural 
religion ; — the doctrines of the existence of God and the 
immortality of the soul are everywhere taken for grant- 
ed in his words, but never proved. It does not consist 
of ideas deduced from the primitive concessions of 
reason. What he teaches, what forms the foundation 
and essence of his system, are things which confound 
reason ; things to which reason can find no access. It 
proclaims a God upon earth, a God man, a God poor, a 
God crucified. It proclaims vengeance overwhelming 
the innocent, pardon raising the guilty from the deepest 
condemnation, God himself the victim of man, and man 
forming one and the same person with God. It pro- 
claims a new birth, without which man cannot be saved. 
It proclaims the sovereignty of the grace of God, and 
the entire freedom of man.* 

* When our author speaks of God as a victim, and subjected to suf- 
fering, he must always be understood as referring to God manifest in 
the flesh, that is, to Jesus Christ in his whole nature as human and di- 
vine. Some, I know, object to such expressions as those in the text, as 
being unphilosophical and unscriptural. But in this they may be mis- 



2^4 vinet's miscellanies. 

I do not soften its teachings. I present them in their 
naked form. I seek not to justify them. No, — you 
can, if you will, be astonished and alarmed at these 
strange dogmas ; — do not spare yourselves in this par- 
ticular. But when you have wondered sufficiently at 
their strangeness, I shall present another thing for your 
astonishment. These strange doctrines have conquered 
the world ! Scarcely made known in poor Judea, they 
took possession of learned Athens, gorgeous Corinth, 
and proud Rome. They found confessors in shops, in 
prisons, and in schools, on tribunals and on thrones. 
Vanquishers of civilization, they triumphed over bar- 
barism. They caused to pass under the same yoke the 
degraded Roman and the savage Scandinavian. The 
forms of social life have changed,— society has been dis- 
solved and renewed, — these have endured. Nay more, 

taken. Our philosophy of the divine nature is exceedingly shallow and 
imperfect. God is not the cold and impassive Being which it too often 
represents him. Perfect and ever blessed he certainly is ; but that he 
is incapable of everything like sentiment or emotion, is exceedingly 
questionable. Such is not the view given of him in the Scriptures. Are 
we not expressly informed that the Word was made flesh, that he might 
suffer death for every man, and that it behooved him in all things to be 
made like unto his brethren ? If he suffered at all, did not his whole 
being suffer ? Was there not a profound and mysterious sympathy be- 
tween his human and his divine natures ? How else can we account for 
the infinite value and efficacy attached to his sufferings and death? 
How else explain the adoring reverence of the primitive church in view 
of his agony in the garden and on the cross ? Besides, suffering is by 
no means an evidence of imperfection ; nay, the experience of it may be 
necessary to the highest felicity, on the part even of pure and perfect 
natures. In this respect the sinless and adorable Saviour was made 
perfect through sufferings, as much, perhaps, for his own sake as for 
ours. But this is a subject which philosophy does not understand ; and 
We can only say devoutly, " Great is the mystery of godliness ; God was 
manifest in the flesh !" — T. 



A CHARACTERISTIC OF THE GOSPEL. 225 

the church which professed them, has endeavored to 
diminish their power, by beginning to corrupt their pu- 
rity. Mistress of traditions and depositary of knowl- 
edge, she has used her advantages against the doctrines 
she ought to have defended ; but they have endured. 
Everywhere, and at all times, in cottages and in pala- 
ces, have they found souls to whom a Redeemer was 
precious and regeneration necessary. Moreover, no 
other system, philosophical or religious, has endured. 
Each made its own era, and each era had its own idea ; 
and, as a celebrated writer has developed it, the religious 
sentiment, left to itself, selected forms adapted to the 
time, which it broke to pieces when that time had passed 
away. But the doctrine of the cross continued to re- 
appear. If it had been embraced only by one class of 
persons, that even were much, that perhaps were inex- 
plicable ; but you find the followers of the cross among 
soldiers and citizens, among the rich and the poor, the 
bold and the timid, the wise and the ignorant. This 
doctrine is adapted to all, everywhere, and in all times. 
It never grows old. Those who embrace it never find 
themselves behind their age ; they understand it, they 
are understood by it ; they advance with it and aid its 
progress. The religion of the cross appears nowhere 
disproportionate to civilization. On the contrary, civ- 
ilization advances in vain ; it always finds Christianity 
before it. 

Do not suppose that Christianity, in order to place 
itself in harmony with the age, will complacently leave 
out a single idea. It is from its inflexibility that it is 
strong ; it has no need to give up anything in order to 
be in harmony with whatever is beautiful, legitimate 
and true ; for Christianity is itself the type of perfection. 
10* 



228 vinet's miscellanies. 

It is the same to-day as in the time of the Reformers, in 
the time of the Fathers of the church, in the time of the 
Apostles and of Jesus Christ. Nevertheless it is not a 
religion which flatters the natural man ; and worldlings, 
in keeping at a distance from it, furnish sufficient evi- 
dence that Christianity is a system foreign to their na- 
tures. Those who dare not reject it, are forced to 
soften it down. They divest it of its barbarisms, its 
myths, as they are pleased to call them 5 they render it 
even reasonable, — but, strange to say, when it is rea- 
sonable, it has no power ; and in this, is like one of the 
most wonderful creatures in the animal world, which, 
when it loses its sting, dies. Zeal, fervor, holiness, and 
love disappear with these strange doctrines ; the salt 
has lost its savor, and none can tell how to restore it. 
But, on the other hand, do you not, in general, perceive 
when there is a revival of these doctrines, Christianity 
is inspired with new life, faith is reanimated and zeal 
abounds ? Do not ask, Upon what soil, or in what sys- 
tem, must grow these precious plants ? You can reply 
in advance, that it is only in the rude and rough soil of 
orthodoxy, under the shadow of those mysteries which 
confound human reason, and from which it loves to re- 
move as far as possible. 

This, then, among all religions, is the only one which 
is eternally young. But perhaps physical nature will 
do what moral nature cannot. Perhaps climates will 
arrest that angel which carries the everlasting gospel 
through the heavens. Perhaps a certain corporeal or- 
ganization may be necessary for the reception of the 
truth. But you may pass with it from Europe to Af- 
rica, from Ethiopia to Greenland, from the Atlantic to 
the Southern sea. Everywhere will this message be 



A CHARACTERISTIC OF THE GOSPEL. 227 

heard ; everywhere fill an acknowledged void ; every- 
where perfect and renew the life. The soul of the ne- 
gro slave receives from it the same impressions as the 
soul of Isaac Newton. The lofty intelligence of the 
one and the stupidity of the other have, at least, one 
great thought in common. And let it be well re- 
marked, the effects are everywhere the same. The 
cross sheds a light that illumines all. As if by instinct, 
not by painful reasoning, they reach, everywhere, the 
same conclusions, recognize the same duties, and, in 
different forms, commence the same life. Wherever 
Christianity is introduced, civilized man draws nearer 
to nature, while the savage rises towards civilization ; 
each in his turn, and in an inverse sense, makes some 
steps towards a common centre, which is that of true 
sociability and true civilization. 

It will, perhaps, be objected, that this civilizing power 
of Christianity is found only in the sublime morality of 
the gospel ; and that it is not by the positive doctrines, 
but rather in spite of them, that savages are converted, 
and then civilized. This assertion is false in whatever 
aspect it may be viewed. 

In readily conceding to the evangelical morality a 
decided superiority to all other systems of morals, we 
wish it to be observed, that this superiority holds less 
with reference to the precepts, than their basis or mo- 
tives ; in other words, the mysterious and divine facts 
which distinguish Christianity as a positive religion. 
The gospel has not invented morality; many of its 
finest maxims were, for a long time previous, in circu- 
lation in the world. The gospel has not so much pro- 
mulged them, as placed them on a new foundation, 
and quickened them by a new spirit. The glory of the 



228 vinet's miscellanies 

gospel consists less in announcing a new morality, than 
in giving power to practise the old. 

But let us not dispute. We admit that the morality 
of the gospel contains many things absolutely new ; but 
it must be conceded that there was in the world, and 
particularly in the writings of the ancient sages, as fine 
a morality ; and that, if morality has a power within it- 
self, an intrinsic virtue, we should expect to see practice 
in some proportion to theory. But in former times, 
now, and always, in each man, and in humanity gene- 
rally, we are struck with a singular disparity between 
principles and conduct; and are constrained to ac- 
knowledge, that in this sphere, at least, what is done 
responds poorly to what is known ; and that the life by 
no means harmonizes with convictions. The knowl- 
edge of morality is not morality ; and the science of 
duty is not the practice of duty. 

These general remarks are fully confirmed by the 
history of the evangelization of the heathen. If one 
fact is known and acknowledged, it is that it has never 
been by the preaching of morality, — not even of evan- 
gelical morality, — that their hearts have been gained. 
Nay, it is not more so by the teaching of natural relig- 
ion. Pious Christians, deceiving themselves on this 
point, wished to conduct the people of Greenland me- 
thodically by natural to revealed religion. As long as 
they rested in these first elements, their preaching did 
not affect, did not gain a single soul; but the moment 
that, casting away their human method, they decided 
to follow that of Christ and of God, the barriers fell 
before them, and once more the folly of the cross was 
found to be wiser than the wisdom of man. The 
schools teach us to proceed from the known to the un- 



A CHARACTERISTIC OF THE GOSPEL. 229 

known, from the simple to the composite ; but in the 
kingdom of God, things occur which derange all our 
ideas. There we must begin at once with the un- 
known, the composite, the extraordinary. It is from 
revealed religion that man ascends to natural religion. 
He is transported at a single bound into the centre of 
mysteries. He is shown God incarnate — the God man 
crucified, before he is shown God in glory. He is 
shown the system before the details, the end before the 
beginning. Do you wish to know why ? It is that the 
true road to knowledge in religion is not from God to 
man, but from man to God ; that before knowing him- 
self he cannot know God ; that the view of his misery, 
and of his sins, conducts him to the atonement, and the 
atonement reveals to him, in their fulness, the perfec- 
tions of his Creator. It is, to repeat the celebrated 
saying of Augustine, that " man must descend into the 
hell of his own heart, before he can ascend to the heaven 
of God." The Christian religion is not merely the knowl- 
edge of God, but the knowledge of the relations of man 
with God. It is the view of these relations which sheds 
the most light upon the character and attributes of God 
himself. And hence it is quite correct to say that re- 
vealed religion, which is precisely the discovery of these 
relations, conducts to natural religion, namely, to that 
which is more elementary, to the idea of the infinite, 
whence natural religion is derived, to religious feeling 
and the conceptions which are called natural, but which 
ought to be called supernatural. These are, ordinarily, 
but little familiar, seldom present, and not altogether 
natural to our minds. In fact, how many men has the 
gospel taken from the depths of materialism, and con- 
ducted, by the way of Christian doctrine, to a belief 



230 vinet's miscellanies. 

in the existence of God, and the immortality of the 
soul.* 

It is, then, the doctrines, the mysteries, the paradoxes 
of the gospel, we must carry to the savage, if we would 
gain his heart to natural religion, from which he is es- 
tranged, and to pure morality, of which he knows still 
less. But even if our adversaries could reverse all this, 
they would not the less remain under the pressure of an 
overwhelming difficulty. If natural religion and moral- 
ity suffice to make converts, will they not suffice also to 
make preachers ? Find us, among those who do not 
believe in the positive doctrines of Christianity, men 
disposed to undertake that laborious and dangerous mis- 
sion. Come, let the philosophers and rationalists bestir 
themselves ; let us see then faith by their works ; let 
their zeal serve to prove, to corroborate their system ; 
let them, from love of morality and natural religion, 
quit parents, friends, fortunes, habits, plunge into an- 
cient forests, traverse burning plains of sand, brave the 
influences of a deadly climate, in order to reach, con- 
vert and save some souls ! Might they not do for the 

* The following, taken from the Biblical Repository, Vol. i., second 
series, p. .383, is a striking illustration of what our author asserts : — 

" Francis Junius, whom, at his death, it was remarked by Scaliger, 
the whole world lamented as its instructor, was recovered from atheism, 
in a remarkable manner, by simply perusing St. John i. 1-5. Persuaded 
by his father to read the ]S"ew Testament, ' At first sight,' he says, ' I 
fell unexpectedly on that august chapter of St. John the evangelist, " In 
the beginning was the Word," &c. I read part of the chapter, and was 
so struck with what I read, that I instantly perceived the divinity of 
the subject, and the authority and majesty of the Scripture to surpass 
greatly all human eloquence. I shuddered in my body, my mind was 
confounded, and I was so strongly affected all that day, that I hardly 
knew who I myself was ; but thou, Lord my God, didst remember me 
in thy boundless mercy, and receive me, a lost sheep, into thy fold.' " 



A CHARACTERISTIC OF THE GOSPEL. 231 

kingdom of God half of what so many courageous 
travellers have done and suffered for science, or the 
temporal prosperity of their country ? What ! no one 
stir ! no one even feel ! This appeal has not moved a 
single soul of those friends of religion and morality, for 
whom the cross is folly ! Why, it would appear that 
they had no love for God, no care for souls, none of the 
pious proselytism found among the partisans of the 
strange doctrines of the fall of man, a bloody expiation, 
and a new birth ! My brethren, does this evidence sat- 
isfy you, and do you believe that there can be any other 
means, than by these doctrines, of establishing the king- 
dom of God on the earth ? Thus Christianity is clearly 
the positive religion, which combines all the conditions 
enumerated in our question. 

These are not arguments we present to the adversa- 
ries of Christianity ; they are facts. They have only 
to recognize this striking characteristic of Christianity, 
to see, with us, that angel who flies through the heavens, 
having the everlasting gospel to preach to all that dwell 
upon the earth, and to every tribe, and tongue, and peo- 
ple. These are facts which we claim to offer them. 
If they are false, let them be proved so. If they are 
true, let any one dispute the conclusion, if he can. Let 
him explain by natural causes, a phenomenon unique in 
its kind. Let him assign, if he can, a limit to that 
power, that influence of Christianity. But will any one 
give himself the trouble of doing this ? In truth, it is 
more easy to shut the eyes, and, repeating with confi- 
dence some hearsays, to assure us that, according to 
the best information, Christianity has gone by ; that it 
has had its era to make, and has made it, — its part to 
play, and has played it ; and that " the only homage we 



232 vinet's miscellanies. 

can render it now, is to throw flowers upon its tomb." 
This tomb would be that of the human race. Christi- 
anity yet preserves the world from the wrath of God. 
It is, perhaps, with a view to its propagation, that events 
are pressing onward, and that nations are agitated with 
a fearful crisis. Shall a few sceptics, with frivolous 
hearts, give the lie to the most high God, and the im- 
mense pressure of circumstances prove a false standard 
of providence ? Let us pray for the progress of the 
everlasting gospel, and the conversion of those proud 
spirits who, till now, have disdained to recognize it. Let 
us pray that it may constantly become more precious to 
ourselves, and that its laws may be as sacred as its 
promises are sweet. 



NATURAL FAITH. 

"Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed."— John xx. 29. 



The apostles did not profess to convey to the world 
anything but a message, good news, the news of that 
fact which the angels announced to the shepherds of 
Bethelehem, in these words : " Glory to God in the 
highest ; on earth peace, good-will to men !" Faithful, 
but not indifferent messengers, deeply moved themselves, 
by the good news they carried to the world, they spoke 
of it with all the warmth of joy and love. Preachers 
of righteousness, they urged with force, the practical 
consequences of the facts they announced, and in their 
admirable instructions, a leading sentiment, gratitude, 
was expanded into a multitude of duties and virtues, 
the combination of which forms the purest morality. 
But at this point, their ministry terminated ; and cer- 
tainly they made no pretension of introducing a new 
philosophy into the world. Nevertheless, they have 
done so, and those who, in modern times, devote them- 
selves to ascertain what ideas are concealed under the 
great facts of the gospel, to penetrate into its spirit, and, 
if we may so express ourselves, construct the system 
of it, cannot refrain from admiration, while reflecting on 
the, connection of parts in that great whole, their per- 



234 vinet's miscellanies. 

feet harmony with one another, and the harmony of 
each, with the permanent characteristics and inextin- 
guishable wants of human nature. This philosophical 
character of the gospel would have been striking, even 
if the apostles had appeared to impress it voluntarily 
upon their instructions ; but how much more is this the 
case, and how well fitted to make us perceive the divin- 
ity of the gospel, when we see that its writers had no 
consciousness of the fact, and that it was in spite of 
themselves, so to speak, that it was stamped upon their 
work ! This philosophical character would have been 
striking even in a simple religion, one apparently ra- 
tional, approaching, in a word, to natural religion, as 
much as a positive one can ; but how much more strik- 
ing it is, when we consider that this religion is a com- 
plete tissue of strange doctrines, the first view of which 
appals the reason. If these doctrines, so arbitrary in 
appearance, involve ideas eminently natural, and a sys- 
tem perfectly consistent, who will not be struck with 
it ; and who will not wish to ascertain, by what secret, 
reason the most sublime springs from the folly of the 
cross, philosophy from dogma, and light from mystery ? 
Nowhere, as it appears to us, is this philosophical 
character of Christianity so vividly impressed, as on 
the doctrine of the gospel concerning faith. Not only 
is the general necessity of faith recognized, as in all re- 
ligions ; but this principle holds in it a place, enjoys an 
importance, and exhibits effects, which prove that the 
gospel alone has seized the principle in all its force, and 
applied it in all its extent ; in a word, that it alone has 
thoroughly discovered, and fully satisfied the wants of 
human nature. The following proposition, then, will 
form a subject worthy of our attention. The religions 



NATURAL FAITH. 235 

of man, and the religion of Jesus Christ, are, with refer- 
ence to the principle of faith, philosophically true, with 
this exception, that in the first, there is only a feeble 
and unprofitable beginning of truth, and in the second, 
the religion of Jesus Christ, it is found in all its pleni- 
tude, and all its power. To prove this proposition, we 
propose to develop, in its various applications, the lan- 
guage of our Saviour : " Blessed are they who have 
not seen, and yet have believed." 

I remark, first, that human religions have rendered 
homage to philosophical truth, by placing faith at their 
foundation ; or rather, that they are themselves a hom- 
age to that truth, inasmuch as, by their existence alone, 
they have proclaimed the necessity and dignity of faith. 
This is the first idea we have to develop. 

The necessity and dignity of faith ; — nothing can be 
more philosophical, nothing more reasonable than this 
idea. And yet, if we are to believe vulgar declama- 
tion, and the sayings of people of the world, faith can 
be the portion only of weak minds and diseased imagi- 
nations. On the contrary, it is, in a certain degree, the 
common heritage of the human race ; and in the high- 
est degree, the peculiar gift of elevated characters, of 
noble spirits, and the source of whatever in the world 
bears the impress of greatness. 

The entire life of man, considered in its essence, is 
composed of three things, thought, feeling, action. 
Feeling is the motive of action ; knowledge is the point 
of departure for both, and therefore is the basis of life. 
From this every thing proceeds, to this everything re- 
turns. Before all, it is necessary to know ; but the first 
glance enables us to see how little proportion there is 
between the means of knowledge and the multiplicity 



236 vinet's miscellanies. 

of its objects. It is impossible, indeed, that we should 
see everything, and have experience, in all the cases 
in which knowledge is desirable. A vast chasm, then, 
very frequently extends between knowledge and action ; 
over that abyss a bridge is thrown by faith, which, rest- 
ing on a given fact, upon a primary notion, extends it- 
self over the void, and conveys us to the other side. 
Some kind of experience, physical or moral, a view 
external, or internal, of observation or intuition, is the 
point of departure, or the reason of faith. This first 
fact itself neither demands nor requires faith ; but its 
consequences, its logical deductions, are not embodied, 
do not become a reality for man but by means of faith, 
which presents them to his mind, and constructs for 
him a world beyond that which personal experience has 
revealed.* 

* That all science, physical and metaphysical, is ultimately based 
upon faith is conceded by the profoundest philosophers. Certain funda- 
mental axioms, or intuitions, must be taken for granted before a single 
step can be taken in any department of inquiry. In a word, the ulti- 
mate basis of all knowledge is a matter of faith. Upon this point we 
quote the following striking passage from Jouffroy's " Philosophical Mis- 
cellanies." 

" This," (confidence in the ultimate decisions of our mind,) " is the en- 
tire foundation of the belief of humanity ; when a man holds to a prop- 
osition, if you go back to the principle of his conviction, you will al- 
ways find that it rests on the testimony of one or more of his faculties ; 
an authority which resolves itself into that of intelligence, which would 
be altogether without value, if intelligence were not constituted so as to 
reflect things as they are. 

" But how is it demonstrated that such is the constitution of intelli- 
gence ? We not only have no demonstration of this kind, but it is im- 
possible we should have one. In fact, we can demonstrate nothing, ex- 
cept with our intelligence ; now, our intelligence cannot be admitted to 
demonstrate the veracity of our intelligence ; for, in order to believe the 
demonstration, we must previously admit what the demonstration tin- 



NATURAL FAITH. 237 

We are accustomed to oppose reason and faith to 
each other ; we ought rather to say, that the one com- 
pletes the other, and that they are two pillars, one of 
which could not, without the other, sustain life. Man 
is pitied, because he cannot know everything, or rather 
because he cannot see everything, and is thence com- 
pelled to believe. But this is to complain of one of his 
privileges. Direct knowledge does not call into requi- 
sition the living forces of the soul ; it is a passive state, 
honored by no spontaneity. But in the act of faith, 
(for it is an act, and not a state,) the soul is in some 
sort creative ; if it does not create the truth, it draws 
it from itself, appropriates, realizes it. Under its influ- 
ence, an idea becomes a fact, a fact forever present. 
Thought, supported by a power of the soul, then man- 
ifests all its dignity in revealing its true independence ; 
man multiplies his life, extends his universe, and attains 
the perfect stature of a thinking being. His dignity is 
derived from believing, not from knowing. 

Faith is invested with a character still more elevated, 
when it takes its point of departure from the word of a 
witness, whose soul ours has penetrated, and recognized 
its authority. Then, under a new name, that of con- 
fidence, it attaches itself to the noblest elements of our 
nature, sympathy, gratitude and love ; it is the condi- 
tion of the social relations, and constitutes their true 
beauty. Far from contradicting reason, it is the fact 

dertakes to prove, namely, the veracity of intelligence ; which would be 
a vicious circle. We therefore have, and can have, no proof of the fact 
on which all our belief reposes ; that is, that human belief is not de- 
ceptive." 

Faith in the testimony of our own minds, as to ultimate principles, is 
thus the foundation of all knowledge. Faith supports philosophy as 
well as religion. — T. 



238 vinet's miscellanies. 

of a sublime reason, and one might say, that it is to the 
soul, what genius is to the intellect. When the apostles 
recognized, by his words, their risen Master, when 
Thomas, sceptical as to their testimony, wished to put 
his finger into the wounds of Jesus, — who was rational, 
if not the apostles, and irrational, if not Thomas ? 
And, notwithstanding, for how many people would not 
Thomas be the type of prudence, if he had not become 
by tradition, that of doubt ! 

Let us resume. That power which supplies evidence, 
that power, which, at the moment when a man, advan- 
cing upon the ocean of thought, begins to lose his foot- 
ing, and feels himself overwhelmed by the waves, lifts 
him up, sustains him, and enables him to swim through 
the foam of doubt to the pure and tranquil haven of 
certainty, is faith. It is by faith, according to the 
apostles, (Heb. xi. 1,) that what we hope for is brought 
nigh, and what we see not is made visible. It is faith 
which supplies the place of sight, the testimony of 
the senses, personal experience and mathematical 
evidence.* 

* The facts of which we have no personal knowledge or experience, 
are, so to speak, without us. They have, what the Germans call, an ob- 
jective, but not a subjective reality. They exist, but, so far as we are 
concerned, might as well not exist. We cannot be said, in any proper 
sense of the word, to possess them. How, then, do they become ours ? 
By faith in the testimony of others, is the common reply. But a mere 
belief, or a passive reception of testimony, would leave them as much 
without us as ever. They would exist for us, but not in us. But faith 
is an active principle. It seizes and appropriates the truth, and lodges 
it as a living element in the souL Truth is made for the soul, and the 
soul for truth. It sees it by a sort of intuition. The moment it comes 
to the soul, it comes to its own. It finds a home there. But the soul 
itself is a truth and a power. It has laws and energies of its own, 
which it imparts to all the realities which come to it. In a word, it has 



NATURAL FAITH. 239 

Faith is not the forced and passive adherence of a 
spirit vanquished by proofs ; it is a power of the soul, 
as inexplicable in its principle as any of the native 
qualities which distinguish man amongst his fellow- 
creatures ; a power which does not content itself with 
receiving the truth, but seizes it, embraces it, identifies 
itself with it, and permits itself to be carried by it to- 
wards all the consequences which it indicates or com- 
mands. 

Faith is not credulity ; the most credulous man is not 
always he who believes the most strongly. A belief, 
easily adopted, is as easily lost ; and the firmest convic- 
tions are generally those which have cost the most. 
Credulity is but the servile compliance of a feeble 
mind ; faith demands the entire sphere and energy of 
the soul. 

Let us add, that it is a capacity and a function, the 
measure and intensity of which vary with individuals, 
while the direct evidence is for all equal and identical. 
Among the partisans of the same doctrine, and the 
equally sincere defenders of the same truth, some be- 

the power of intuition and the power of faith. Faith is thus, as our au- 
thor shows, a sort of mental creation, giving, as it does, reality and 
power to the invisible and the future. " It is the substance (realization) 
of things hoped for, the evidence (conviction, vision) of things not seen." 
By means of it we know what would otherwise be unknown, and do 
what would otherwise be undone. It is an energetic principle, and, in 
the department of religion, " worketh by love, and overcometh the 
world." By its aid, we are made to live, even while on earth, in the 
spiritual and eternal world. " We walk by faith, not by sight." Yet 
faith, as Vinet beautifully remarks, is the vision of the soul. 

" The want of sight she well supplies, 
She makes the pearly gates appear, 
Far into distant worlds she pries, 
And brings eternal glories near." 



240 VINETS MISCELLANIES. 

lieA*e more firmly; the object of their faith is more real, 
— is nearer and more vividly present to their minds. 
While others, whose conviction is full and free from 
doubts, do not possess so strong a conception, so vivid 
a view of the object of faith. 

It might be supposed that when reasoning has pro- 
duced conviction, there can be no further use or place 
for faith. This is a mistake. Reasoning leaves the 
truth without us. To become a part of our life, a part 
of ourselves, it requires to be vivified by faith. If the 
soul* concur not with the intellect, certainly the most 
legitimate would want strength and vivacity. There 
is a courage of the intellect like the courage of the soul, 
and thoroughly to believe a strange truth, supposes, in 
some cases, a power which all do not possess. In vain 
will some persons try to do this ; for the conclusions to 
which they have come by a series of logical deductions, 
scarcely produce upon their minds an impression of re- 
ality. A great difference will always exist between 
reasoning and seeing, between deduction and experi- 
ment. It would seem, after all, that the mind has yet 
need of sight ; that it does not yet possess that strong 
and efficacious conviction which it derives from a sen- 
sible impression ; and it is for this that faith is useful ; 
it is a sort of sight. Moreover, even when we have 
gathered together all the elements of certainty, the most 
satisfactorv reasoning; does not always in itself secure 
perfect repose to our minds. It might be said that, in 
the case of many persons, the more the road from the 
premises to the conclusion was long and circuitous, the 

* Here, as in many other instances, the term soul is used in a pecu- 
liar and restricted sense, as signifying the moral, sentimental and imagina- 
tive part of our nature.— T. 



NATURAL FAITH. 241 

more their conviction loses in fulness, as if it were fa- 
tigued by its wanderings, and had arrived exhausted at 
the end of its reasoning. Often will an obstinate doubt 
place itself in the train of the most logical deductions, a 
peculiar doubt, which brings no proofs, which makes no 
attempt to legitimate itself, but which, after all, throws 
a shadow over our best acquired convictions. When 
it is not born from within, it comes from without; 
spread in the crowd that surrounds us, it besieges us 
with the mass of all strange unbeliefs. It is not known 
how difficult it is to believe in the midst of a multitude 
which does not believe. Here is a noble exercise of 
faith ; here its grandeur appears. This faith in con- 
tested truths, when calm, patient, and modest, is one of 
the essential attributes of all those men who have been 
great in "the hierarchy of minds." What is it that 
gives so much sublimity, in our imaginations, to the 
great names of Galileo, Descartes and Bacon, unless it 
be their faith in the truths with which they had en- 
riched their minds ? A Newton reigns with majesty 
over the world of science, but he reigns without com- 
bat ; his image is that of a sovereign, not of a hero. 
But we feel more than admiration for the great names 
I have mentioned ; gratitude, mingled with tenderness 
and respect, is the only sentiment which can become 
us. Our soul thanks them for not having doubted, for 
having preserved their faith in the midst of universal 
dissent, and for having heroically dispensed with the 
adherence of their contemporaries. 

Shall I say this even ? Yes, but to our shame. Faith 
finds its use even in the facts of personal experience. 
Such is our mind, such, at least, is it become, that it 
distinguishes between external and internal experience, 

II 



242 vinet's miscellanies. 

and, yielding without hesitation to the testimony of the 
senses, it costs it an effort to yield to the testimony of 
consciousness. It requires submission, and by conse- 
quence, a species of faith, to admit those primitive 
truths which it carries within it, which have no ante- 
cedents, which bring no other warrant but their own 
existence, which cannot be proved, which can only be 
felt. Irresistible in their nature, still some require an 
effort in order to believe them. Have we not seen 
some such who have endeavored to draw their notions 
of justice from those of utility, so as to go back, by this 
circuit, to matter, and consequently to physical experi- 
ence ?* It might be said that it was painful to them to 
see the road to knowledge shortened before them, that 
they regretted the absence of that circuitous path which 

* Our author here refers to the sensual philosophy of such men as 
Condillac and Helvetius, who, taking Locke's idea, that all our knowl- 
edge is derived from sensation and reflection, have carried it out to the 
most extreme and absurd consequences, proving thus that there must be 
some defect in the system of Locke, or at least in his method of stating 
it. These material and Epicurean philosophers refer all our notions of 
justice to utility, all our feelings of reverence, affection and gratitude to 
mere emotion and sensation. In their analysis, the loftiest sentiments 
are reduced to the images and impressions of material forms. The very 
soul is materialized, and the eternal God is either blotted from existence 
or represented as the shadowy and infinite refinement of physical ex- 
istence. 

The Abbe Condillac, who was a worthy man, and an elegant writer, 
never intended to go so far as this, but his successors soon ran down his 
system to absolute atheism, which, for some time, was the prevalent 
philosophy in France. A better system is beginning to prevail there ; 
still, even the spiritual philosophy is liable to run to the same extreme 
as gross materialism. The great difficulty with such philosophers as 
Cousin and some others, is, that they feel themselves superior to the 
Word of God. Their transcendentalism is liable to become as sceptical 
and irreligious as the sensualism of Helvetius and Voltaire.— T. 



NATURAL FAITH. 243 

God wished to spare them ; and it is this strange preju- 
dice that obliges us, in some sort, to do violence to the 
nature of things, and exhibit, as an act of faith, what is 
only a manifestation of evidence. 

However this may be, faith, that is to say, in all pos- 
sible spheres the vision of the invisible, and the absent 
brought nigh, is the energy of the soul, and the energy 
of life. We do not go too far in saying that it is the 
point of departure for all action ; since to act is to quit 
the firm position of the present, and stretch the hand 
into the future. But this, at least, is certain, that faith 
is the source of everything in the eyes of man, which 
bears a character of dignity and force. Vulgar souls 
wish to see, to touch, to grasp ; others have the eye of 
faith, and they are great ! It is always by having faith 
in others, in themselves, in duty, or in the Divinity, 
that men have done great things. Faith has been, in 
all time, the strength of the feeble, the salvation of the 
miserable. In great crises, in grand exigences, the fa- 
vorable chance has always been for him who hoped 
against hope. And the greatness of individuals or of 
nations may be measured precisely by the greatness of 
their faith. 

It was by faith that Leonidas, charged with three 
hundred men for the salvation of Greece, encountered 
eight hundred thousand Persians. His country had 
sent him to die at Thermopylae. He died there. What 
he did was by no means reasonable, according to ordi- 
nary views. All the probabilities were against him ; 
but in throwing into the balance the weight of his lofty 
soul, and three hundred heroic deaths, he did violence 
to fortune. His death, as one has happily said, was 
" well laid out." Greece, united by so great an exam- 



244 VINET S MISCELLANIES. 

pie, pledged herself to be invincible. And the same 
spirit of faith, — faith, I mean, in her own power, — was 
the principle of all those actions in that famous Persian 
war which secured the independence of Greece. 

What was it that sustained amid the wastes of the 
ocean, that intrepid mortal who has given us a new 
world ? It was an ardent faith. His spirit, convinced, 
had already touched America, had already trodden its 
shores, had there founded colonies and states, and con- 
veyed, by a new road, shorter though indirect, the reli- 
gion of Jesus Christ to the regions of the rising sun.* 
He led his companions to a known land ; he went home. 
Thus, from the moment that he received this convic- 
tion, with what patience have you seen him go from 
sovereign to sovereign, entreating them to accept a 
world ! He pursued, during long years, his sublime men- 
dicity, pained by refusals, but never affected by con- 
tempt, bearing everything, provided only that he should 
be furnished with the means of giving to some one that 
marvellous land which he had placed in the midst of the 
ocean. Amid the dangers of an adventurous naviga- 
tion, amid the cries of a mutinous crew, seeing his death 
written in the angry eyes of his sailors, he keeps his 
faith, he lives by his faith, and asks only three days, 
the last of which presents to him his conquest. 

What power had the last Brutus, at the moment when 
he abandoned his faith ? From the time of his melan- 
choly vision, produced by a diminution of that faith, 
it might have been predicted, that his own destiny and 
that of the republic were finished. He felt it himself; 

* That is to say, Columbus believed that by going west, he should 
reach the eastern hemisphere, by an easier, yet more indirect route, and 
convey to those distant regions the blessings of Christianity. — T. 



NATURAL FAITH. 245 

it was with a presentiment of defeat that he fought at 
Philippi. And such a presentiment always realizes itself. 

The Romans, at their origin, persuaded themselves 
that they could found an eternal city. This conviction 
was the principle of their disastrous greatness. Perpet- 
uated from generation to generation, this idea conquered 
for them the world. An unheard-of policy made them 
resolve never to treat with an enemy, except as con- 
querors. How much value did they attach to faith, 
when, after the battle of Cannae they thanked the im- 
prudent Varro for not having despaired of the salvation 
of the republic ? It would certainly make a vicious cir- 
cle, to say, we believe in victory, therefore we shall 
conquer. But it is not always the people who reason 
the best, that are the strongest ; and the power of man 
generally lies more in his conviction itself, than in the 
goodness of the proofs by which it is sustained. 

Whence is derived the long duration of certain forms 
of government, and of certain institutions, which to-day 
we find so little conformed to right and reason ? From 
the faith of the people, from a sentiment, slightly ra- 
tional, and by no means clear, but energetic and pro- 
found, a sort of political religion. It is important that a 
government should be just, a dynasty beneficent, an in- 
stitution reasonable ; but faith, up to a certain point, 
can take the place of these things, while these do not 
always supply the want of faith. The best institutions, 
in respect to solidity and duration, are not the most con- 
formed to theory; faith preserves them better than 
reason ; and the most rational are not quite consolidated, 
until after the convictions of the mind have become the 
property of the heart, until the citizen, no longer search- 
ing incessantly for the reasons of submission, obeys by 



246 vinet's miscellanies. 

a certain lively and voluntary impulse, the principle of 
which is nothing but faith. 

Another thing still more surprising, faith often at- 
taches itself to a man ! There are great characters, 
powerful wills, to whom is given a mysterious empire 
over less energetic natures. The majority of men live 
by this faith in powerful men. A few individuals lead 
in their orbits the whole human race. They do not 
weigh all the reasons which such men give ; they do 
not calculate all the chances which they develop ; they 
do not judge them, they only believe in them. Many 
men, for decision, for action, for faith, follow the impulse 
of these privileged natures ! And why should this as- 
tonish us ? Their feebleness is transformed into strength 
under that powerful influence, and they become capable, 
by sympathy, of things which, left to themselves, they 
would never have imagined, thought of, nor desired. 
Amid dangers, when fear is in all hearts, the crowd de- 
rive courage and confidence from the assured words of 
a man, who has no one to trust but himself. Every one 
confides in him who confides in himself, and his auda- 
cious hope is often the best resource, in a moment of 
general anxiety. 

But we leave to others the task of multiplying exam- 
ples. We are sure that from all points of history proofs 
arise of the truth we exhibit. Wherever man has given 
to the future the vividness of the present, and to the 
representations of his own mind the power of reality, 
wherever man believes in others, in himself, or in God, 
he is strong. I mean, with a relative strength ; strong 
in one respect, feeble, perhaps, in all others ; strong for 
an emergency, feeble, perhaps, beyond it ; strong for 
good, strong also for evil. 



NATURAL FAITH. 247 

Human religions, then, have rendered homage to a 
truth, and comprehended a general want, in furnishing 
to man an object of faith, superior in its nature to all 
others. They have fully acknowledged, that in the 
rude path of life, man has not enough, in what he knows, 
and in what he sees ; that his most solid supports are 
in the region of the invisible, and that he will always be 
less strong by outward realities than by faith. They 
give strength to numerous souls who cannot confide in 
themselves ; and, by placing in heaven succor and hope, 
they govern from on high, the events which envelop 
and protect the whole life. 



CHRISTIAN FAITH. 

" Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed."— John xx. 29 



We have sufficiently exalted human faith, let us abase 
it now. Having spoken of its marvels, let us recount 
its miseries. 

Human religions have recognized a want of our na- 
ture ; they have excited and cherished it, but they have 
deceived it. In the first place, they were pure inven- 
tions of man. Not that faith, considered as a motive 
of action, and a source of energy, should absolutely need 
to repose upon the truth, but that what is false cannot 
last, and must, at the very least, give place to a new 
error. Faith in human inventions may be firm and 
lively so long as there is a proportion between them and 
the degree of existing mental culture. That epoch 
past, faith gradually evaporates, leaving dry, so to speak, 
one class of society after another ; the dregs of belief 
then remain with the dregs of the people ; the more 
elevated classes are sceptical or indifferent ; and the 
thinkers are fatalists or atheists. If, in some extraordi- 
nary cases, the old religion continues, it is, as we have 
seen in a preceding discourse, at the expense of intel- 
lectual advancement and every other kind of progress. 



CHRISTIAN FAITH. 249 

These old religions, instead of giving energy to the soul, 
exhaust it ; instead of sustaining, oppress it. 

In another respect, the faith of the heathen is still 
less commendable. It is entirely alien to the moral 
perfection of man ; often, indeed, directly opposed to it. 
It proposes to console man, it more frequently tyrannizes 
over him. Nowhere has it for its final aim to regener- 
ate him ; nowhere does it rise to the sublime idea of 
causing him to find his happiness in his regeneration. 

Shall we say aught respecting the faith of deists ? 
Thoroughly to appreciate it in an era like ours, it ought, 
at the very first, to be divested of what it has involun- 
tarily borrowed from the gospel. The deism of our day 
is more or less tinctured with Christianity ; this is the 
reason why it does not, like that of antiquity, lose itself 
in fatalism. But whatever it may be, and taking it in 
its best forms, we must acknowledge that the faith of 
the deist is only an opinion ; an opinion too, exceed- 
ingly vague and fluctuating, and which, as a motive of 
action, does not avail so much as the faith of the hea- 
then. Let deism but have its devotees, who, to please 
their divinity, permit themselves to be crushed beneath 
the wheels of his car, and we will acknowledge that 
deism is a religion. 

Thus it is not without a kind of pleasure that we be- 
hold the sceptics of our day, not knowing what to do 
with their natural religion, and haunted by a desire to 
believe, frankly addressing themselves to other objects, 
and, strange to tell, making for themselves a religion 
without a divinity. I do not speak here of the covetous, 
who, according to St. Paul, are real idolaters, nor of the 
sensual, who, according to the same apostle, " make a 
God of their belly/' It is of souls not sunk so low, souls 

11* 



250 vinet's miscellanies. 

who, less sceptical originally, have retained their crav- 
ing, their thirst for the infinite, but have mistaken its 
true import. This craving for God and religion, which 
unconsciously torments them, induces them to seek 
upon earth some object of adoration ; for it is necessary 
that man should adore something. It is difficult to say 
how they come to invest with a character of infinity, 
objects whose finite nature must continually strike us ; 
but it is certain that this illusion is common. Some 
make science the object of their passionate devotion. 
Others evoke the genius of humanity, or, as they say, 
its ideal, devoting to its perfection and triumph, equally 
ideal, whatever they possess of affection, of thought 
and of power. Others, and, in our day, the greatest 
number, have made for themselves a religion of political 
liberty. The triumph of certain principles of right in 
society, is to them what the kingdom of God and eternal 
life are to the Christian. They have their worship, 
their devotion, their fanaticism ; and those very men 
who smile at the mysticism of Christian sects, have also 
their mysticism, less tender and less spiritual, but more 
inconceivable. 

Thus, in spite of all their efforts to the contrary, and, 
notwithstanding all their pretensions, each one, we doubt 
not, has his religion, each has his worship, each deifies 
something, and when he knows not what idea to make 
divine, he deifies himself. 

It was in this way that infidelity commenced in the 
garden of Eden ; and as such was its beginning, such 
also is its final result. In reality all other apotheoses, 
if we examine them carefully, come to this. In science, 
in reason, in liberty, it is himself to which man renders 
homage. But faith in one's self originates a particular 



CHRISTIAN FAITH. 251 

kind of worship, which it is important to notice. It 
consists of a circle, the most vicious and absurd. The 
subject and the object are confounded in the same in- 
dividual ; the adorer adores himself, the believer be- 
lieves in himself; that is to say, since worship always 
supposes a relation of inequality, the same individual 
finds himself inferior to himself; and since faith sup- 
poses an authority, the authority in this case submits to 
the same authority. This confusion of ideas no longer 
strikes us when we have permitted the inconceivable 
idea to enter our minds that we are something beside 
ourselves, — that the branch can subsist without the 
trunk ; whence it follows that we are at once above and 
beneath ourselves, that the same persons are by turns 
their own masters and their own servants. Thus live 
by choice and system some men who pass for sages. 
They have faith in themselves, in their wisdom, energy, 
will and virtue ; and when this faith succeeds in root- 
ing itself firmly in the heart, it is capable of producing, 
outwardly, great effects ! I have said great, but upon 
this point I refer you to Jesus Christ himself, who says, 
" that which is highly esteemed among men is abomi- 
nation with God." 

Do you prefer this faith in ideas, and this faith in self, 
to the faith of the heathen in their imaginary gods ? 
And why not see that, independently of the pride and 
irreligion which characterize these two forms of faith, 
they are, even humanly speaking, extremely defective ? 
Here it is proper to notice the imprudence with which 
some have exalted subjective faith, according to the 
name given it by the schools, above objective faith, by 
intimating that the main thing is to believe firmly, 
whatever, in other respects, be the object of faith ; in- 



252 vinet's miscellanies. 

tending, doubtless, to apply this maxim only to the vari- 
ations in the truth, not to the truth itself. But how 
easy is the transition from the one to the other. Why 
deny that the men of whom we have just been speaking 
possess, in a high degree, subjective faith ; and that such 
faith may be in them a quick and intense energy, fitted 
equally for resistance and movement ? But is this the 
only question to be asked respecting it ? Are we to be 
satisfied with its being powerful, without demanding an 
account of the manner in which it uses its power? 
What, then, are the effects of this much vaunted faith 
of man in man ? Does it not leave in his interior na- 
ture immense chasms ? Does it not cultivate it, to 
speak more plainly, in the wrong direction, and in a way 
to corrupt it ? When all the fluids of the body are 
conveyed to one part of the system, what becomes of 
the rest ? When all the devotions of man are addressed 
to man, what becomes of God ? And what a monstros- 
ity is that faith which has become erroneous and false 
to such an extent as this ? 

But do not believe that this faith, even in its own 
sphere, has all the prerogatives ascribed to it. There 
are, I allow, inflexible spirits, whom age only hardens, 
and who die in their superstition, fanatical to the last, 
touching enlightenment, civilization, and freedom. But 
the greater number disabuse and free themselves before 
they die. Some of them have been seen smiling at 
their former worship, and trampling under their feet 
with disdain the ruins of their former idols. The soul 
is easily satiated with what is not true ; and disgust is 
then proportioned to previous enthusiasm. Ye will 
come to this, ye who believe in the regeneration of the 
human race by political freedom ; ye who have never 



CHRISTIAN FAITH. 253 

known that, until man becomes the servant of God, he 
can never enjoy true freedom ; ye will sigh over your 
dreams when popular passions have perhaps colored 
them with blood ! Ye will come to this, ye who are 
confident in your native generosity, in the liberality of 
your sentiments and the purity of your intentions, in a 
word, ye that have faith in yourselves. When a thou- 
sand humiliating falls have convinced you of your 
weakness, when disabused with reference to others, ye 
shall be disabused also with reference to yourselves, 
when ye shall exclaim, like Brutus, " O Virtue, thou art 
only a phantom !" what will then remain to you ? That 
which has remained to so many others, the pleasures of 
selfishness or of sensuality, the last bourne of all errors, 
the vile residuum of all false systems. If, indeed, it shall 
not then be given you to accept in exchange for the 
faith which has deserted you, a better faith which will 
never desert you, and which it now remains for us to 
announce. 

We declare to you the faith of the gospel ; study its 
characteristics, and become acquainted with its excel- 
lence. 

Nowhere is the importance of faith estimated so 
high as in the gospel. In the first place, you learn, at 
the very first glance, that it is faith which saves, not 
for time, but for eternity. " By faith ye are saved," 
says St. Paul. " If thou confess Jesus Christ with thy 
mouth, and believe with thine heart that God raised 
him from the dead, thou shalt be saved." " Christ is 
the author of eternal salvation to all them that believe." 
This is the first characteristic of Christian faith, that 
salvation depends on it. 

But do not, on this account, consider it as a merito- 



254 vinet's miscellanies. 

rious act. While in other religions faith is an arbitrary 
work to which it has pleased the Divinity to attach a 
merit and a recompense, a work without any other 
value than an accidental one, communicated to it by 
the promise from on high ; in the gospel, faith is repre- 
sented as having an intrinsic power, a virtue of its own, 
a direct influence upon the life, and by the life upon 
salvation. Faith, according to the gospel, saves only 
by regenerating. It consists in receiving into the heart 
those things which are fitted to change it. The Chris- 
tian, with reference to God, to himself, to life, has con- 
victions entirely different from those of the world, if, 
indeed, the world has upon these subjects anything like 
convictions. But such is the doctrine of the gospel, 
that when it penetrates a spirit agitated by remorse 
and the terrors of the judgment to come, it produces a 
joy and gratitude, the inevitable effect of which is to 
impel it in a direction opposite to that which it has 
hitherto followed. The believer has found peace ; can 
he abandon the source of peace ? Can he wander away 
to shattered cisterns that can hold no water, when 
within his reach he has fountains of living waters 
springing up unto everlasting life ? Can he fail to obey 
Him, who, for his benefit, became obedient unto death, 
even the death of the cross ? Will he not submit to 
the providence of that God, who, having given to him 
his only-begotten Son, has proved to him that, in all 
things, He can desire nothing but his happiness ? Will 
he, who loves his Father in heaven, hate any of his 
brethren on earth ? And will he fail to pray, who 
knows that the very Spirit of God makes intercession 
for him with unutterable sighs ? Yes ! Christian faith 
is the victory over the world ; Christian faith contains 



CHRISTIAN FAITH. 255 

all the elements of a holy life. And what proves this 
better than all reasonings is, the many holy lives, so 
consistent and harmonious, of which Christianity alone 
supplies the model, and especially those wondrous revo- 
lutions which render persons truly converted new crea- 
tures ; which subdue to sweetness so many angry souls, 
to patience, impetuous natures, to humility, haughty 
spirits, to sincerity, dissembling characters, to tranquil- 
lity, troubled hearts ; which, in a word, creates in man 
a new soul, capable of all the virtues the very opposite 
of the vices which have tyrannized over his life. 

The unity of life ought to correspond to the unity of 
the principle, and not only so, but to its immensity. 
Faith in something finite, can produce only finite re- 
sults ; faith in anything imperfect or fleeting, only im- 
perfect and fleeting results. But God is the principle 
which includes all principles ; he is more, he is the prin- 
ciple which regulates and quickens all. Everything 
is false and mutilated if it relate not to God ; but all is 
true, complete, united, fruitful, which has the true God 
for its principle. What part of the field of morals can 
remain sterile and useless under an influence from 
which nothing can escape ? Over what virtue cannot 
God preside ? With what duty can He dispense ? How 
shall He, who is justice, goodness, and beauty supreme, 
fail to attract to himself whatever is just, and good, and 
beautiful ? It is on this account that the knowledge 
of God, of the true God, is the only principle of a per- 
fect morality ; and most insensate is he who would 
ascribe to it any other. 

But do not demand of Christian faith only splendid 
things. It has these, it is true ; but it holds in tension 
all the strings of the soul at once, and extends its influ- 



256 vinet's miscellanies. 

ence to all points at the same time. We have seen 
Leonidas perish at Thermopylae for the salvation of 
Greece. Christian faith would teach a Christian to do 
as much as that ; but it would also render him capable, 
every day. of a thousand little sacrifices. It would arm 
his soul against all internal assaults of anger, of envy, 
and of false glory. Could the faith of Leonidas do all 
these things ? 

This infinite variety, this immensity of application of 
the Christian faith, is better explained by a reference 
to its dominant characteristic, which is love. Love 
prescribes no limits. Were a sentiment only of legal 
justice in the heart of a Christian, he would try to 
measure his task, he would trace for himself precise 
limits, he would know where to stop ; but obeying be- 
cause he loves, loving Him whom he cannot love too 
much, He abandons himself to the impulse of his heart 
as the worldling abandons himself to his passion. He 
never says, and he never can say, it is enough. He 
would fear that he loved no longer when he could say 
to his love, " Hither shalt thou come, and no farther." 
Love knows neither precaution nor reserve ; it ever 
desires more ; it is inflamed by its own movement ; it 
grows by sacrifices themselves, expects to receive in 
the measure that it gives, and is itself its own reward ; 
for the true reward of love is to love yet more and 
more. Where, then, in its applications, shall a faith 
stop which resolves itself into love ? 

It is scarcely necessary, after all this, to prove that 
Christian faith is an energetic principle of action. To 
abstain and sustain constitute but half of the morality 
founded upon love. Very far from confining itself to 
a character of obedient passivity, the holy impatience 



CHRISTIAN FAITH. 257 

of love seeks and multiplies occasions of testifying its 
ardor towards the Saviour God from whom it has ema- 
nated. Faithful to the express commands of the gospel 
and the example of Jesus Christ, whose holy activity 
never relaxed, Christian love, each moment, creates for 
itself new spheres of labor, and new domains to con- 
quer. Will not even the enemies of Christianity be the 
first to admit an activity which vexes and alarms them 
daily? Do not those who accuse Christian faith of 
fanaticism render a beautiful homage to the force of 
action which dwells in it ? Christ well characterized 
the faith which he brought into the world, when he 
said, with so much energy, — " If ye had faith as a grain 
of mustard seed, ye would say to this fig tree, be thou 
plucked up by the roots, and be thou cast into the midst 
of the sea ; and it would do it." Such, indeed, is the 
power of Christian faith, that, long before the appear- 
ance of Christ, when it was nourished only in the 
shadow of Him that was to come, already Christians 
by anticipation, under the ancient dispensation, were 
rendered capable, by their faith, of the most heroic 
efforts and the most extraordinary works. Read in the 
eleventh chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews, the 
picture of what this faith enabled the Christians of the 
ancient covenant to do ; bring together that picture and 
the one presented from the days of the apostles to ours, 
and you will not doubt, that if faith, in general, is an 
energetic principle of action, Christian faith is the most 
energetic of all. 

A last characteristic of this faith is its certainty. I 
do not speak of that array of external proofs which 
form the imposing bulwark of the Christian revelation ; 
proofs for which the sceptics of our day affect a con- 



258 vinet's miscellanies. 

tempt so little philosophical, and which scarcely one in 
a hundred gives himself the trouble to examine. I do 
not speak of them here, for they are not equally within 
the reach of all the faithful. But the Christian has a 
proof better still ; he has God present in the heart ; he 
feels, every moment, the influence of the Spirit of God 
in his soul. He loves ; therefore he has the truth. His 
proof is not of a nature to be communicated by words ; 
but neither can words take it away. You cannot prove 
to him that he does not love God ; and if he loves God, 
will you dare to insist that he does not know God ? I 
have already asked it once, and I ask it again : Can he 
who loves God be deceived ? Is he not in possession of 
the truth ? And if Christianity alone gives him power 
to love God, is not Christianity exclusively the truth ? 
Such is the certainty in which the faithful rejoice. I 
do not add, that it is cherished and quickened by the 
Holy Spirit. I only speak of obvious facts, facts re- 
specting which the unbelieving as well as the believing 
can satisfy themselves. And I limit myself to saying, 
that the faith of the true Christian has for its peculiar 
characteristic a certainty which elevates it above that 
of any other belief. 

Behold, ye men of the world, ye thinkers, ye great 
actors in the concerns of time ! behold the faith which 
I propose to your hearts, empty and famishing for faith, 
say rather deceived by faith itself! Certainly it does 
not depend upon me to make you accept it, by the por- 
trait I have traced, nor upon you to become its votaries, 
through this simple exposition. Arguments do not 
change man ; life only teaches life ; God only reveals 
God. But is what we have said without some attain- 
able end and application ? No, if we have succeeded 



CHRISTIAN FAITH. 259 

in making you understand at least the imperfections of 
your faith, and the superiority of Christian faith with 
reference to life and action. As to the first point, it is, 
I believe, beyond contradiction. As to the second, we 
have proved, it appears to us, all that we had to prove. 
We have not demonstrated that the Christian religion 
is true, that the revelations upon which it rests are 
authentic. Our only object was to demonstrate that, 
like all other beliefs, it renders homage to a want of the 
human soul, and, what no other belief has yet done, that 
it has satisfied this want ; that it furnishes to man 
a principle of energy and action, the distinctive features 
of which are not found united in any other faith ; that 
it has an intensity, a generality of application, an eleva- 
tion of tendency, and, in fine, a certainty which no 
other possesses ; that in all these respects it presents a 
type of perfection which has never been realized in any 
human invention ; and that if God himself has given a 
faith to the world, it is impossible he should have given 
a better in any respect. After this, it would appear 
quite superfluous to inquire if the Christian religion is 
true. To us, this proof is sufficient ; and we earnestly 
pray that it may strike others as it strikes us. May 
such, by the grace of God, be the result of this address. 



PRACTICAL ATHEISM. 

" Without God in the world."— Eph. xi. 12. 



These words were addressed by St. Paul to the re- 
cently converted Christians, at Ephesus, and form a 
part of the chapter, in which that great apostle reminds 
them of the state of darkness, of moral depravity and 
condemnation, in which they were plunged, before the 
messengers of salvation had proclaimed to them Jesus 
Christ. The painful truth included in this text, being 
established by the infallible authority of the divine word, 
and being found in accordance -with the whole current 
of Christian revelation, we might dispense with the task 
of seeking any other proofs of it. But God has not for- 
bidden us to prove and illustrate the perfect and wonder- 
ful harmony of his word, with the clearest principles of 
reason and nature. On this account, we invite you to 
investigate with us the proofs of that proposition of 
St. Paul, that the Ephesians, before knowing Jesus 
Christ, were without God in the world. 

Aid us by your attention. And if you involuntarily 
feel some prejudices against the position we are about 
to sustain, be willing to repress them for a few moments. 
I am not going to prove that the Ephesians, before their 
conversion, did not believe in God ; that were an un- 



PRACTICAL ATHEISM. 261 

tenable position. The belief in God is so inherent in 
the human race, so essential to our reason, that the 
most depraved persons can with difficulty free them- 
selves from it. Not every one that wishes it is an 
atheist; the very devils believe and tremble. How 
could Paul say such a thing of the Ephesians, in 
sight, as it were, of the temple of their Diana ? How 
could he say so, when at Athens, beholding altars every- 
where, he had reproached the inhabitants of that cele- 
brated city with being, in some sort, too devout ? 
What he wished to say, and what we seek to prove, is, 
that in the case of an unconverted Ephesian, nay more, 
of the most enlightened Ephesian, of him who in the 
steps of the philosophers had risen to the idea of the 
divine unity, it would have been the same thing, not to 
believe in God, as to believe in him as he did. 

And if this even should appear to some hard to be- 
lieve, I beg them to give attention to the following 
question. What is it to believe in the existence of a 
being ? Is it not to believe that there is a subject, in 
which certain qualities unite, that distinguish it from all 
others ? Do not these qualities, or properties, make 
the particular object or being what it is, and not some- 
thing else ; and when we deny all these qualities, or 
properties, one after another, does it not amount to 
denying the object itself ? 

What would you say of a people, who had resolved 
to give themselves a king, who had even invested a 
man with that illustrious dignity, but who, from some 
motive, should take from him successively, the right to 
raise armies, and to make war and peace, the privilege of 
nominating to offices, and the revenues necessary to 
sustain his dignity, and finally those marks of respect, 



262 vinet's miscellanies. 

which his title appears to demand? You would say 
that this people had no king. In vain would a man 
exist among them whom they called king ; he is not one, 
since he cannot be such, without certain qualities and 
prerogatives ; which qualities and prerogatives he has 
not. This is a republic, under the name of a monarchy. 

What, in like manner, would you say of a man, or of 
a society, who should say, we acknowledge a God, but 
who should refuse to that God the attributes most 
essential to his dignity, and most inseparable from 
the idea of his perfection ; and reduce him, so to speak, 
to nothing but a name ? Assuredly, you would say, 
that such a man, and such a society, do not believe in 
God, and that under the name of religion, they profess 
atheism. 

Very well, it will be said, the principle is incontest- 
able ; but who dreams of disputing it ? Is there in the 
world any one so unreasonable as to deny the perfec- 
tions of God, such as his goodness, his justice, and his 
providence ? Yes, there is one in the world who de- 
nies them. It is the Ephesian before his conversion. 

Here we have a second step to take. We have seen 
that to deny the attributes essential to the nature of 
God, is to deny God ; you must also grant us now, that 
to deny the acts, which are a necessary consequence 
of his attributes, is to deny those attributes themselves. 
In other words, it is to deny the perfections of God, to 
refuse to him the exercise of these perfections. For 
what is a perfection without its exercise ? What is 
holiness without its application ? What is it but a 
useless power ? It is a name, it is nothing. 

You believe in the justice of God, St. Paul might say 
to the Ephesians. You believe, then, that God sus- 



PRACTICAL ATHEISM. 263 

tains, defends, and vindicates a moral order, which he 
has established for the benefit of his creatures, and for 
his own glory. You believe that this justice, being 
infinite, cannot be satisfied, but by an obedience entire 
and unreserved. You believe that this justice, being 
spiritual, demands the obedience not of the hands only, 
but of the heart and the will. You believe that this 
justice, being inviolable, can receive no stain, without 
demanding a reparation, sudden, complete, absolute. 
You believe all this, you say ; consequently you believe 
also that your sins ought to be punished, that your 
heart which is not given to God, ought to be condemned ; 
that your penitence effaces none of your transgressions, 
since what is done cannot be undone, and violated or- 
der is not less violated ; that your good works can no 
more do so, since the good you have done in reparation 
of your sins, ought to be done just as much as if you 
had no sins for which to make reparation. You be- 
lieve, then, that you are condemned, necessarily con- 
demned. If you do not believe it, you have a God 
without justice, that is to say, you have no God. 

I suppose, however, might St. Paul say, that you be- 
lieve in his justice ; but do you believe in his goodness ? 
You believe in it, you say. But certainly not in a 
goodness limited, mingled with weakness, liable to 
change. You believe that God loves his creatures with 
an everlasting love ; that no tenderness in the world, 
not even that of a mother, is comparable to his ; that it 
is not only your body, but your soul, that God loves ; 
and that this love is as active as it is eternal. Is it not 
true that you believe all this ? Ah ! who does not be- 
lieve it ; who does not need to believe it ? Is it not under 
the features of love, that you are pleased to represent the 



264 vinet's miscellanies 

Supreme Being ? It is so. But between you and his 
goodness, what frightful phantom rises, and covers, as 
with boding wing, his face full of benignity ? It is the 
phantom of his justice, the image of your sins. Try to 
invoke, as a Father, him you have never ceased to 
offend ! Try to believe in all the goodness of God, in 
spite of his vengeance !* Terrible alternative, not to 
be able to admit the goodness of God, without denying 
his justice, nor to believe in his justice without denying 
his goodness. No, not to you, is he the gracious God; 
but he shall be, if you listen to the marvellous fact we 
are charged to announce to you. A Redeemer has been 
found ; the great mediation so often shadowed on earth, 
in all the religions of the nations, has been realized in 
heaven. God has given his Son, and his Son has given 
himself, to offer to his Father the only satisfaction he 
could accept, the only atonement which could be effica- 
cious, the only reconciliation which " reconciles all 
things." If he had not given himself, justice, which 
nothing can arrest, would have had its course. But can 
you, who have not received Jesus Christ, believe in 
God as a gracious God ? Can you, from the depths of 
your misery and rejection, cry to him, " Our Father who 
art in heaven ?" You have in the world a master, an 
accuser, a judge ; have you truly a God ? 

You believe in providence, might St. Paul say to the 
Ephesians. Ah, blessed is he who believes in so great 
a mystery ! It is a proof that he has passed from death 
to life. But do you know thoroughly what it is to be- 
lieve in providence ? Alas ! I doubt it ; for why, when 
an event occurs which involves your welfare, do you 

* Vengeance here means, simply the administration of justice, particu- 
larly in the infliction of punishment.— T. 



PRACTICAL ATHEISM. 265 

immediately speak of fate or chance ? And why, when 
you receive some benefit from men, does your gratitude 
stop with them, instead of rising to the Eternal ? And 
why, when you receive some evil from them, do you 
think only of being indignant towards the mortal hand 
which strikes you, and never think of adoring with awe 
the divine authority, without whose permission you 
could not have been struck ? And why, in view of the 
revolutions of the world, do you perceive nothing but 
secondary causes, which indeed ought to be carefully 
studied, but from which you never rise to the Great 
First Cause ? Is that to believe in providence ? But 
what we have just referred to, is only a part of the 
sphere of the activity of Jehovah. If he controls the 
world of things, he governs also, under another name, 
the world of morals ; and that name is the Holy Spirit. 
Do you believe in the Holy Spirit ? Do you believe 
that from him proceed all good resolutions and all good 
thoughts ? Do you believe that his influence is freely 
given by our Heavenly Father to all those who ask it ? 
It would seem to require no great effort to believe that 
No doctrine is more reasonable. We cannot, without 
absurdity, deny to God, who has made our minds, the 
power and influence to direct them. But if you do not 
believe in the Holy Spirit, in that quickening soul of the 
moral world, I ask you, what God do you possess ? 

Behold, my brethren, what St. Paul might have said 
to the Ephesians before their conversion. Behold, too, 
what he could not say to them, after their conversion. 
The Christian sees manifested, and developed, in per- 
fect harmony, the justice, the goodness, and the provi- 
dence of God. In Jesus Christ they are consummated, 
realized, enthroned. In him the divine justice has been 

12 



266 vinet's miscellanies. 

accomplished, — by him the goodness of God has been 
proclaimed, — by him, in fine, the government of the 
Holy Spirit and a moral providence have been placed 
beyond a doubt. These truths are the whole substance 
and aim of the gospel. The Christian alone knows 
God ; the Christian alone has a God. 

I feel as much as any one, all that is paradoxical and 
harsh, which such an assertion at the first moment pre- 
sents. But I ask, what is that God, who should have 
no right either to our adoration, our confidence, 
or our love ? And, indeed, how can we adore a God, 
whose justice, pliable and soft, should accommodate 
itself to the corruption of our hearts, and the perversity 
of our thoughts ? How, on the other hand, love a God 
whom we could not behold, but under the aspect, and 
with the attributes of a severe and inexorable judge ? 
How could we confide in a God who, indifferent to our 
temporal interests, and to those of our souls, should ex- 
ercise no supervision over our conduct and destiny ? 
And, we ask once more, what is a God whom we can 
neither know, adore, nor love ? In truth, my brethren, 
for it serves little purpose to soften the words, the pro- 
fession of the faith of the Ephesians is an involuntary 
profession of atheism. St. Paul might say to him, do 
not exile your God amid the splendors of a distant glory, 
whence the sun of righteousness can never warm the 
moral world, and shed upon it the purifying influence 
of its rays ; or, if such be the God you wish, do not, I 
pray you, mock yourselves so cruelly ; and at least re- 
spect, by never pronouncing, a name which you can no 
longer regard as holy. Or rather pronounce it unceas- 
ingly, as the name of a being forever absent and lost ; 
cultivate, and so to speak, enhance by your tears, that 



PRACTICAL ATHEISM. 267 

idea, the grandeur of which will remind you of your 
destitution ; but do not abuse, do not flatter yoursveles, 
by imagining you have a God, when you have nothing 
more than the idea. Acknowledge to yourselves, not 
that the universe has no God, a thing you have never 
been able to doubt, but that you, in some sense, fallen 
below the rest of created beings, are without God in the 
world. 

Behold, what reason, honestly interrogated, furnishes 
us touching the religion of the Ephesian before his con- 
version. But as his religion, such also will his life be. 
For it is impossible that he that is without God in the 
world should live like him who has a God. And to 
prove it, we do not require to develop to you his moral 
conduct, and show you how far he is removed from that 
holiness of which God is at once the source, the motive, 
and the model. Without running over the whole circle 
of his relations, it is sufficient to say what he is with 
relation to God ; in other words, to point out the place 
which God occupies in his moral life. That place, alas! 
how small it is ! The idea of God is neither the centre of 
his thoughts, nor the soul of his life, but an idea acces- 
sory, supernumerary, very often importunate, and asso- 
ciated indifferently with his other thoughts. If God did 
not exist at all, the circle of his ideas would not be less 
complete, nor his reason less satisfied. When he is 
occupied with the idea of God, it is as a simple view of 
the intellect, not as a real fact, which determines the 
aim of existence, and the value of life. He applies it 
less to practical purposes, than the astronomer the fig- 
ure of the earth, the course of the stars, and the measure 
of the heavens. His belief in God is almost purely 
negative. It permits God to exist, not being able to do 



268 vinet's miscellanies. 

otherwise ; but this belief neither controls his life, nor 
regulates his conduct. He believes in God ; he says so 
when occasion requires it ; but it does not gratify him 
to speak of it to his family or his friends ; he never en- 
tertains his children with it, and he makes no use of it 
in their education. In a word, his thought is not full 
of God, does not live upon God ; so that we might say 
of him, in his first relation, that he is without God in 
the world. 

Yet there is one voice in the universe. The heavens 
declare the glory of God ; though they have no lan- 
guage, properly speaking, their voice is heard, even by 
the dullest ear ; and through the ear, that voice some- 
times penetrates to the heart. Yes, in view of that 
magnificent aspect of nature, all full of love and life, the 
heart of the Ephesian is sometimes softened. I will not 
ask him, why, in gazing upon these beauties, his heart 
soon aches, and his bosom heaves with sighs; I will not 
ask him whence comes that involuntary sadness, which 
succeeds the rapture of the first view. I will not say 
that what then weighs upon his thoughts is the con- 
trast between nature so beautiful, and a soul degraded ; 
between an order so perfect, and the disorder of his 
feelings and thoughts ; between that exuberance of life, 
spread through immensity, and the consciousness of a 
fallen existence, which dares not reflect upon its dura- 
tion. I will not ask him to observe that this feeling is 
so appropriate to a soul like his, that he recurs to it at 
each emotion of joy, as to a signal, appointed to poison 
and to tarnish it. And I will not conclude, as I might 
do, that all this comes from the fact that God is absent. 
No, I shall only ask, What is that emotion ? What 
does it prove ? Does it give you a God ? Alas, that 



PRACTICAL ATHEISM. 269 

confused feeling has moved the souls of millions who 
have gazed upon these beauties, and have left them such 
as they were. Nature, which excites alternately pleas- 
ure and pain, regenerates no one. Observe the Ephe- 
sian, whom it has touched. That fleeting emotion, as 
soon as dissipated, restores him wholly to the world. 
Even if he rendered worship to his Creator, his life is 
not a worship ; it is not devoted to the Lord of heaven 
and earth. His conduct obeys a thousand impulses by 
turns, but he does not know the meaning of that admi- 
rable precept, " Whatsoever ye do, do it for the Lord,, 
and not for man ; glorify God in your spirits, and in 
your bodies, which are his." It is not for God that he 
is a literary man, a merchant, an artisan, a man of 
property, a laborer, a citizen, or the head of a family ; 
it is for himself. He is his own God and his own law. 

Events adverse and prosperous come by turns. They 
succeed each other without interruption, and always 
find him without God. Happy, — he has no emotion of 
gratitude to the Lord. Unhappy, — he does not receive 
the occasion of it as a reproof or a counsel. Sick, — he 
thinks not of the great Physician. Dying, — he has no 
hope of heaven. In a word, that thought of God which 
must be everything or nothing in the life, is nothing in 
his ; nothing, at least, worth estimating. He yields 
nothing to it, sacrifices nothing, offers nothing. And, 
after all this, he will tell us that he has a God ! 

But we have spoken long enough of this imaginary 
being, this unregenerate Ephesian. Are there, in your 
opinion, no sceptics but in Ephesus ? Is there no hea- 
thenism but in the heathen world ? Is the portrait we 
have drawn applicable only to an extinct race ? And 
is it not applicable to those thousands, alas ! to those 



270 VINET S MISCELLANIES. 

millions of the heathen of Christianity, who also live 
without God in the world ? Let there be no delusion 
here ; this description is either false or true. False, it 
applies to no one, and to the Ephesian idolater no more 
than another ; true, it has its originals in all ages, in all 
countries, and, without doubt, also among us. 

God forbid that I should make but one class of all the 
persons who do not believe the gospel. There are those 
among them who are climbing towards the truth, with 
a slow, but persevering pace. There is already some- 
thing of Christianity in those serious and tender souls, 
who are seeking, on all sides, another God than that 
which the world has provided for them. For already, 
without having a clear notion of the gospel, they have 
received from the Holy Spirit a secret impulse, which 
urges them to seek a God, invested with those attributes 
which the gospel has revealed, a God of infinite justice, 
a God of infinite goodness, a God of providence. Re- 
ligion stretches out her hands to them, and salutes them 
with a gentle name, even at the time w r hen they would 
seem to resist her ; for she discerns in them a thirst for 
righteousness and peace, which she only is capable of 
satisfying. And she waits for the happy moment, when, 
recognizing the striking harmony between the Christian 
revelations and the imperfect revelations they have re- 
ceived from the voice within, these Christians by antici- 
pation, these Christians by desire and want, shall become 
such in fact and profession. 

But this takes nothing from the truth we have estab- 
lished, touching the unbeliever who is living without 
God in the world. And whither would this lead us, 
were we to pursue the subject ? We have spoken only 
of his opinions, of his interior feelings. And his actions, 



PRACTICAL ATHEISM. 271 

do not they prove that his thoughts, according to the 
energetic language of the prophet, are all as if there 
were no God ? This I should aim to show, if the limits 
of this discourse permitted it. I should discover it to 
you as much in the virtuous as in the vicious unbe- 
liever. I should show you in both the same forgetful- 
ness of God, the same indifference to his glory, the 
same idolatry of self. But a subject of such importance 
requires space. It is not in a few words that we can 
clear up all the difficulties with which it is connected. 

But wiry do I occupy your attention with these 
things ? Have they reference to you ? Or is this ser- 
mon not made rather for a pagan than for a Christian 
temple ? But is it that doubt and error never come to 
sit in a Christian church? They may enter thither to 
seek for light! God bless so good an intention, for 
there is piety even in that ! In such a case, it is proper 
to speak of these things. But even in an audience, all 
the members of which are penetrated with the truths I 
have discussed, such a subject is also appropriate. The 
Christian cannot but gain something by inquiring dili- 
gently into the foundations and privileges of his faith. 
He ought to love to review the titles of his adoption. 
He ought also to learn how to exhibit them with dig- 
nity, and explain them with gentleness, to those who 
ask from him an account of his glorious hope. And 
although the gospel can prove itself true by its own 
power, and without any human aid, to a soul thirsting 
for righteousness, nevertheless the examination of these 
proofs, so rich and so beautiful, is a natural means 
which God often uses to produce or confirm faith. 
May such, in some degree, be the effect of this dis- 
course. May you return to your houses, more con- 



272 vinet's miscellanies. 

vinced and affected with the wonderful attractions of 
the gospel. May you exclaim with the sacred poet, 
" O God, I rejoice in thy word as one that hath found 
great spoil. It shall be a lamp to my feet, and a light 
to my path. Thou hast made me to know the way of 
life. I shall ever be with thee ; thou hast held me by 
thy right hand. Thou wilt guide me by thy counsel, 
and afterward receive me to glory 1" 

We add to this discourse the following from the 
" Discours Nouveaux/' to show that the rejection of 
Jesus Christ amounts to practical atheism. 

And who is he whom God hath sent ? What is it to 
believe on him? And what connection is there be- 
tween that belief and the love of God ? What connec- 
tion ? It probably escapes, in the first instance, the 
greater part of the hearers of Jesus Christ, but it will 
not escape them always, and certainly it cannot escape 
us. He whom God hath sent is his well-beloved, his 
Son, his Other Self; it is himself in a person like unto 
us ; a man, perfectly man, a God, perfectly God. To 
believe on him, is not simply to believe what we have 
just said, but to believe that he hath been sent to us, 
given to us ; it is to believe that the supreme object of 
the Father's love, he whose very name of Son worthily 
characterizes his nature, the perfection of glory, embra- 
cing in a boundless love the whole human race, has 
clothed himself with our mortal flesh, in order to be our 
Redeemer from death, our Representative, our Surety 
and Intercessor. Take away, by a mournful supposi- 
tion, take away Jesus Christ from the world, with his 
might of compassion, and his title of Saviour, and by 



PRACTICAL ATHEISM. 273 

consequence, replace humanity where Jesus Christ found 
it, before an unknown God, the God of Sinai, enveloped 
in thick clouds, penetrated here and there, only by 
threatening flashes of lightning ; or before the God of 
the philosophers, — power without personality, essence 
without feeling, gulf of existence, terror of the imagina- 
tion and the heart ; or, finally, before two closed gates, 
one of which is the gate of perdition, the other that of 
annihilation.* Yes, replace humanity where Jesus 

* It may be thought singular that the God of the philosophers should 
generally be an impersonal God, a God either so spiritual, or so material, 
that he cannot be separated, even in idea, from the universe he has 
made ; a God so infinite, and so creative, that without volition or deter- 
mination of the will, he must ever produce whatever exists in what we 
call the creation, throwing off continually, as from an exhaustless centre, 
all beings, and all modes of being ; a God so perfect and absolute, that 
he has, properly speaking, neither mind nor body, but is all mind and 
all body, and not only so, but blends and absorbs all finite existences, 
material and immaterial, in his own boundless essence. According to 
this view, men and angels, with all material things, are but the necessary 
and outward manifestation of God, a part therefore of God, shadowy and 
imperfect, and destined, in due time, to return unto God. So that He 
only exists as the infinite and eternal Me, " poAver without personality, 
essence without feeling, gulf of existence (gouffre des existences), terror 
of the imagination and the heart." 

It may be deemed singular, we say, that philosophers have generally 
formed this conception of God, which, by the way, is the idea of the 
more dreamy and speculative systems of pagan idolatry, and easily har- 
monizes with the grossest superstition on the one hand, and the deepest 
sensualism on the other. But when we look into the matter more nar- 
rowly, it will not appear so strange as at the first view. For those who 
reject revelation, necessarily reject the idea of an absolute creation, and 
a superintending Providence, truths which lie at the basis of all correct 
theology ; and hence, they plunge at once into that ocean of difficulties, 
where all the speculations of ancient heathen philosophy were engulfed 
and lost. Assuming the axiom, ex nihilo, nihil fit, " from nothing, no- 
thing is made," which is true in one sense, though not in another, true 
perhaps in an absolute, but not in a relative sense, that is to say, true 
12* 



274 vinet's miscellanies. 

Christ found it, and say to that humanity, Love God, 
if there be a God, love him if he be just, love him if he 

when applied generally, but not true in reference to God, and the possi- 
bility of his creating separate substances or essences, -whether minds or 
bodies, in a way not explained, or perhaps capable of being explained 
to us ; assuming this, the philosophers referred to make creation a neces- 
saiy, and not a voluntary act of God, and represent matter as a mere 
modification of himself. Here then the distinction between God and 
his creation, between spirit and matter, vanishes, leaving but one sub- 
stance, one essence or being, in existence, which may be called God, Na- 
ture, or the Universe, as individuals may please. Dr. Norton, in his 
Essay on the Latest Form of Infidelity, states, apparently on good au- 
thority, " that the celebrated Pantheist, Spinoza, composed the work in 
which his opinions are most fully unfolded, in the Dutch language, and 
committed it to his friend, the physician Mayer, to translate into Latin ; 
that where the name God now appears, Spinoza had written Nature ; 
but that Mayer induced him to substitute the former word for the latter, 
in order partially to screen himself from the odium to which he might 
be exposed." 

Spinoza, as all will admit, is the father of modern Pantheism, the high- 
priest in reality of transcendental and mystical Atheism. He is much 
admired by the Hegelians, and even by the Eclectics, of whom Cousin is 
the most distinguished representative ; and his works have recently been 
republished, and extensively circulated in Germany and France. In his 
Posthumous Ethics, he sets out with the proposition that " there cannot 
be two substances or essences" — that " substance is self-existent and in- 
finite," and consequently, that there is " but one substance," which he 
calls God. " By God," says he, " I understand a being absolutely in- 
finite, that is, a substance consisting of infinite attributes, every one of 
which expresses an infinite essence." (See Posthumous Ethics, Schoh 
in Prop. 8. Schol. in Prop. 10.) On this ground, God cannot, in the 
proper sense of the term, create ; " for one substance cannot be pro- 
duced by another substance." Hence, also, Spinoza denies all miracles, 
taking the very ground of Hume, that they are impossible ; and so they 
are, if there be no independent and all-controlling God. " I will show 
from Scripture," he says, impiously referring to the word of God for au- 
thority, just as Satan did in a similar instance, " that the decrees and 
commands of God, and consequently his providence, are nothing but the 
order of nature." (Tractatus Theologico Politicus, Cap. VI., — as quoted 
by Dr. Norton in his Latest Form- of Infidelity) Views similar to these 



PRACTICAL ATHEISM. 275 

loves you ! From the depths of those palpitating hearts, 
you will hear uttered a thousand anxious cries, cries 
incessantly checked. Yes, God loves us ; but what if 
he should not love me ! Yes, God is just, but if he is 
just, he is formidable, and how can I love him ; and if 
not just, he is not to be revered, and how can I love 
him ? God exists, that is clearer than the light of the 
sun ; God is good, since he is God ; but if he is God, he 
is holy, — what can I thence conclude, what can I hope? 
What does he will ? What has he resolved ? Can I 
love him simply because he is worthy of love ? Can I 
love him if he does not love me ? Can I love one who 
perhaps hates me. Can I love in such uncertainty ? 
And must not God first set my heart at liberty in order 
that I may run in the way of his commandments ? 
I represent thoughtful and not frivolous men speaking 

are taken by some of our New England Transcendentalists ; so that 
R. W. Emerson and Theodore Parker deny all inspiration and miracles, 
and though the latter continues to preach, and even to pray, the former 
has wisely abandoned both, as unphilosophical and useless. 

This, then, is the God of the philosophers ; a God without volition, 
without affection, without righteousness, without even personality, — a 
mere idea, a transcendental and pantheistic fancy ; and not " the Lord 
our God," who is " above all, through all, and in all," the Father and 
Saviour of the human family. Oh, it is fearful to think, that it is an 
all-controlling and omnipotent God that the philosophers reject. " We 
are free," says one of them, (Heine in the Kirche-Zeitung, Feb., 1839, 
quoted in the Biblical Repertory,) " and need no thundering tyrant. "We 
are of age, and need no fatherly care. We are not the handiwork of any 
great mechanic. Theism is a religion for slaves, for children, for Gene- 
vese, for watch-makers." 

Do we start back with horror from the God of the philosophers ? 
What then ? Are we infidels still ? Or do we accept the God of reve- 
lation ? But he is just, — he punishes sin, — he has concluded all in unbe- 
. lief. He demands the heart, the life, the all ; and how can we give it, 
unless we are forgiven, reconciled, and born again ? — T. 



276 vinet's miscellanies. 

thus ; the latter perhaps imagine they love God, for the 
very reason, perhaps quite obvious in their view, that 
God is worthy of love because he is God. But mankind 
generally are not frivolous, they are serious, and have 
proved it. Their religions, opposed to the principle we 
have recognized, do not bind man to God ; they do not 
breathe the spirit of love, they do not inspire it nor 
propagate it ; they rather propagate dread of the name 
of God, and clearly testify what, in our present condition 
of uncertainty and perplexity, is our natural instinct 
and inevitable tendency. Enough exists to impel these 
presumptuous men, at least to doubt, whether it is natu- 
ral to love God. But let them retire within themselves, 
and interrogate their own thoughts. They speak of 
loving God ; but do they know well what it is to love 
God ? Do they reflect that God requires that he should 
be loved as God ? There are terrors, there are abysses 
in that single word ; a world intervenes between their 
thoughts and the truth. That pagan philosopher was 
more serious than they, and knew better the real con- 
dition of humanity, who, either with indifference or grief, 
I know not which, exclaimed, " It is impossible to love 
God r 

But is the world, let them proceed to say. is the world 
so worthy of love, that it ought rather than God to pos- 
sess our heart ? Is the world more attractive than 
God? 

If such were the question here, the intellect has 
already decided it ; but the will does not immediately 
follow. The intellect is prompt, very prompt ; it seizes, 
at a single glance, eternal verities ; but the flesh is slow, 
and lingers behind. In our present condition, we do 
not need to be told, detach yourselves from the world, 



PRACTICAL ATHEISM. 277 

to be able to love God ; but, cleave to God, to be able 
to detach yourselves from the world. The attraction 
of the world is always experienced ; we feel it without 
an effort of the will ; it is in resisting it that we must 
use our will. But the attraction of God, in our actual 
situation, is felt only by our intellect, and penetrates no 
further. We must first of all love God, which depends 
not on our will, because we cannot love an object in 
which we do not find our happiness. God must first 
reveal himself to us as the supreme happiness, and not 
merely as the supreme perfection and the sovereign 
law. Even then a great number, perhaps, will not love 
him ; but certain it is, that before knowing him in this 
-character, none will love him ; and if any one among 
men is capable of loving, he will love him thenceforth 
or never. He certainly will love him who, haunted by 
the recollection of his transgressions, overwhelmed by 
the pressure of the law, consumed with sorrow for his 
lost inheritance, hungering and thirsting for righteous- 
ness, that is, for God himself, when he sees him re- 
vealed with all the characteristics of certainty, as a God 
mercilui and gracious, a father, and not a judge, nay, 
more than a father, as a compassionate, devoted and 
tender brother ! 

Either the human heart is incapable, from its nature, 
of feeling love, or that man will feel it who, enveloped 
in ignominy as a garment, has seen the God of glory 
descending even to him, to seek him in the depths 
of his disgrace ; who, from the gloom and sorrow 
in which his conscience kept him plunged, has seen 
himself transported into a region of light and hap- 
piness ; who, in respect to himself, has seen verified 
that amazing language of the prophet, " In all their 



278 vinet's miscellanies. 

afflictions he was afflicted ;" who has seen, — O mys- 
tery, O miracle ! — his God travelling by his side, in 
the rugged path of life ; nay, voluntarily assuming the 
burden which was crushing him ; a God humbled, a 
God weeping, a God anguished, a God dying ! # That 
long contest, if I may dare to say it, that agony of God 
for generations, that painful birth, by which humanity 
was brought forth to the life of heaven, has been re- 
vealed to him in the ancient dispensation ; he has been 
shown the very steps of God impressed upon the dust 
of ages, and mingled with the footprints of the human 
race ; but at the trace which that God has left on the 
rock of Calvary, the rock of his heart is broken, the veil 
of his understanding torn away ; and what he could 
never think of without temerity, he thenceforth con- 
ceives as necessary, that if God has thus loved human- 
ity, he ought to love it as God has done, that is to say, 
with the same spirit, and in the same manner. What, 

* The translator must here take the liberty of repeating what has 
been already said in a former note, to which he would refer his readers, 
and remind them that where our author refers to God, as " weeping, 
anguished and dying," he refers to " God manifest in the flesh," in other 
words, to Jesus Christ, as human and divine. It is expressly said by 
the prophet, with regard to the infinite Jehovah himself, that " in all 
their afflictions he was afflicted ;" and it may not be as unphilosophical 
as some persons imagine^ to represent the Divine Mind as sympathizing 
in the profoundest manner, with the struggles and sufferings of human- 
ity. There is deeper meaning than rationalists wot of in the words of 
the apostle, " For scarcely for a righteous man will one die ; peradven- 
ture for a good man some would even dare to die. But God com- 
mendeth his love towards us, in that while we were yet sinners Christ 
died for us." "We are said to die, when body and spirit separate ; but 
the spirit does not perish. It sympathizes in the agony of dissolution, 
but it lives on, as perfect as ever. So the Divinity in Jesus Christ may 
have sympathized, in a manner inexplicable to us, with the anguish of 
bis death, and yet lived on, in immutable perfection and blessedness. 



PRACTICAL ATHEISM. 279 

then, will he do ? None will ever love God, or that 
man will love him ; that man will never love God, or 
he will love him from this hour. Who can conceive 
of any means of producing love superior to this ? What 
could God, yes God himself, do more ? What could 
he give, after having given himself? That man, then, 
has only to believe in order to love ; and because he 
loves, the works he will thenceforth perform shall be 
works of God. 



GRACE AND LAW. 

" By grace ye are saved."— Eph. ii. 5. 



In no language is there a more attractive word than 
grace ; in the gospel, there is none more offensive to 
the men of the world. The idea of being saved by 
grace offends their pride, shocks their reason. And 
they prefer, a thousand times, to the word grace, so 
sweet and touching, that of law, so formidable and se- 
vere. They desire us to speak to them of the precepts 
of the gospel, of the morality of the gospel ; but they 
are not pleased when we call their attention to the gra- 
tuitous pardon it announces. We shall not, at present, 
explain the causes of this predilection and of this re- 
pugnance, which appear to contradict the deepest ten- 
dencies of human nature. But we shall endeavor to 
show that, so far from these two things, grace and law, 
being irreconcilable, the one conducts necessarily to 
the other ; that the law conducts to grace, and grace, 
in its turn, leads back to the law. 

After we have deduced this truth from the very na- 
ture of things, we shall appeal to experience, and enable 
you to see that whosoever truly admits the one never 
fails to admit also the other. Thus, if it should please 
God to aid us, one of the principal objections which the 
world raises against the gospel will be removed. 



GRACE AND LAW. 281 

I say, then, that the law conducts naturally to grace. 
To convince you of this, will you consider the law with 
reference to four things, or four points of view which 
it offers to our contemplation — its nature, its extent, its 
authoritative character, and finally, its sanction or 
guaranty. 

If you consider the nature of this law, you will see 
that the question has little to do with ceremonies, cus- 
toms, and external performances. Upon this point 
there is no difference of opinion. If these things were 
commanded by Heaven, they would doubtless form a 
part of our duties. But the law, such as Christians and 
even pagans conceive of it, is the moral law, the law 
which subjects the life to the conscience. And this 
law commands us, not merely to act justly, but to be 
just ; not only to do right, but to feel right ; that is to 
say, it demands our heart. 

As to the extent of this law, a word will suffice ; it 
is the law of perfection. He who understands it, re- 
sembles that hero so frequently celebrated in history, 
who believed that he had done nothing, so long as any- 
thing remained for him to do. No relation of his life, 
no moment of his career, no part of his duty, can be 
withdrawn from this universal empire of the moral law. 
To obey in everything, to obey always, to obey per- 
fectly, such is the unchangeable rule of his conduct.* 

* That this is a just view is evident from the fact that perfection, 
■which is the absence of all sin, and the possession of all virtue, is abso- 
lutely necessary to our happiness. God cannot require less of his crea- 
tures than what will secure their permanent well-being. The spirits of 
just men made perfect, and the angels of God, are happy because they are 
holy. They " obey in everything, obey always, obey perfectly." Hence 
we are enjoined to pray, " Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." 
Our heavenly Father, then, has given us a perfect law, in order that he 



282 vinet's miscellanies. 

In the third place, this is not a mere choice, a plan, 
or a calculation, on his part ; he is bound to the law by 
the chains of an imperious and absolute obligation. In 
his eyes, the only thing necessary is to obey. Happi- 
ness, power, life, are not the end, but the means of ful- 
filling the moral law. The question with him is not 
about enjoyment, or power, or life, but about obedience. 
The laws of nature may change, those of duty remain. 
The universe may dissolve, the moral law continues. 
In the confusion of all things, and amid universal dis- 
order, the will to do right does not cease to belong to 
him ; and his activity would fail of its objects, and his 
efforts of their end, if he did not forever feel under 
obligation to be righteous. 

That he may never forget it, a sanction is attached 
to the law. Happiness has been invariably attached 
to obedience, misery to disobedience. On earth, dis- 
gust, remorse, and terror, indicate to rebellious man the 
most terrible punishments concealed in the shadows of 
the future. " The wrath of God is revealed from 
heaven against every soul of man that doeth evil." 

Try to deduct anything from this formidable enumera- 
tion ; try, and you will see, with each attempt, the bur- 
den aggravated by new weights. Say that obedience 

may secure for us a perfect felicity. He has forbidden all wrong, he 
enjoins all virtue ; for all wrong is injurious, all virtue is beneficial. 
One sin, sanctioned or permitted, one virtue, neglected or not com- 
manded, would tarnish our felicity, and introduce disorder into the 
divine administration. The law, then, is the law of perfection. It has 
no limits but those of possibility. It forbids all sin, it enjoins all purity, 
in thought, word, and deed. Like its author, it is " holy, just, and good," 
and therefore immutable and eternal. If, then, it bears severely upon 
us, if it condemns us utterly and irrevocably, this only proves that we 
need pardon and regeneration. — T. 



GRACE AND LAW. 283 

has its limits, and we shall ask you to point them out. 
Say that a compromise may be made between heaven 
and earth, and we shall demand, by virtue of what 
authority you dare to make such a compromise. Say 
that each man has his standard, and we shall inquire of 
each one of you, if he has reached that standard. Say 
that God has no need of your sacrifices, we shall wish 
to know if the commandments of God are regulated by 
his needs ; and we shall compel you to acknowledge, 
that on such a supposition, God would not command 
anything, since assuredly God has no need of anything. 
Say that many of the duties imposed upon you are 
doubtful ; but whence come the greater part of these 
doubts, if not from your reluctance to obey ? More- 
over, do you fulfil those duties of which you do not 
doubt ? Say that obedience is impossible ; but show us 
how, while you find it impossible, it yet appears to you 
highly reasonable ; show us why your conscience per- 
sists in declaring authoritative a law which your ex- 
perience declares impracticable ; show us why, after 
each transgression, you have in vain said, I could not 
have done otherwise ; and why remorse does not cry 
the less vehemently in your soul. Remove this contra- 
diction, if you can ; as for us, we cannot remove it. 

To present to God our bodies and spirits a living and 
holy sacrifice ; to devote to him our whole life ; to seek 
nothing but his approbation ; " to love our neighbor 
as ourselves ; to use the world as not abusing it ;" — such 
is a feeble sketch, a rapid outline of the divine law. 
Let others seek to efface, to obliterate the distinctive 
features ; we shall deepen the impression. Let them 
seek to lighten the burden, we shall press it with all our 
might. We shall, if possible, overwhelm with it the 



284 vinet's miscellanies. 

presumptuous creature who seeks to shake it off, in order 
that, under the oppressive weight of this terrible and 
inexorable law, he may utter that desirable and salutary 
cry which implores grace, and to which the gospel alone 
has responded. 

If, then, you have formed a just idea of the moral 
law, if you have accepted it, not enfeebled and mutila- 
ted, but in all its strictness and majesty, you will ac- 
knowledge yourselves violators of that divine law. 
You will feel yourselves capable neither of fulfilling all 
its precepts together, nor even one of them in a manner 
full and perfect; and in the profound conviction of 
your misery and danger, you will either abandon your- 
selves to an inconsolable despair, or you will cast your- 
selves at the foot of the eternal throne, and beg grace 
and pardon from the Judge of your life. 

It is thus the law leads to grace. But observe par- 
ticularly that I have not said that the law explains grace. 
The work of redemption is a mystery, and will always 
remain a mystery ; the gospel itself only announces it, 
does not explain it. All I meant to say is, that to him 
who contemplates the holy image of the law, there is 
an imperious necessity to rely on grace or perish in his 
sins. 

It is at this point that St. Paul has again exclaimed, 
" Do we make void the law, through faith ? God for- 
bid ! yea, we establish law." This is the second truth 
we have announced ; grace, in its turn, leads back to 
the law. 

In the first place, you will consider that grace, as it 
is manifested in the gospel, is the most august homage, 
the most solemn consecration, which the law can re- 
ceive. This grace is of a peculiar character. It is not 



GRACE AND LAW. 285 

the soft indulgence, and the easy indifference of a fee- 
ble father, who, tired of his own severity, shuts his eyes 
to the faults of a guilty child. It is not the weakness of 
a timid government, which, unable to repress disorder, 
lets the laws sleep, and goes to sleep along with them. 
It is a holy goodness ; it is a love without feebleness, 
which pardons guilt, and executes justice, at the same 
time. It is not possible, that God, who is the supreme 
sanction of order, should tolerate the shadow of disorder, 
and leave unpunished the least infraction of the holy 
laws he has given. Thus, in the work of which we 
speak, condemnation appears in the pardon, and pardon 
in the condemnation. The same act proclaims the 
compassion of God, and the inflexibility of his justice. 

God could not save us without assuming our nature, 
nor assume our nature without sharing our misery. 
The cross, the triumph of grace, is the triumph of law. 
Penetrate this great mystery, and you will acknowledge 
that nothing is more beyond reason, and yet nothing 
more conformed to it. Among all the inventions of 
men, you will seek in vain for another idea, which ex- 
hibits in harmony all the attributes which compose the 
perfection of God.* 

* To every unsophisticated reader of the Scriptures, nothing can be 
more evident, than the sacrificial, or substitutionary character of our 
Saviour's sufferings. That Christ was sinless, all will admit ; that he 
was treated as if he were a sinner ; that he was thus treated by the ap- 
pointment of God, as well as his own voluntary choice, and that his suf- 
ferings were a part of a great scheme, devised by infinite wisdom, for 
the redemption of man, will also be acknowledged. Moreover, that he 
suffered for us, suffered what Ave ought to have suffered a thousand 
times over, but which we could not have suffered, without utter perdi- 
tion, and that God accepts his sufferings, not as a full or commercial 
equivalent for our punishment, but as an expiation, or atonement for 



286 vinet's miscellanies. 

Thus, then, in the idea of evangelical grace, the 
moral law is found highly glorified. Why should it 
not be found equally glorified, in the hearts of those 
who receive grace? How can we believe seriously in 
that bloody expiation, without perceiving all that is 

our sins, on the ground of which, our faith in Christ is accounted for 
righteousness, and procures for us pardon and eternal life, will scarcely 
be denied by any serious and candid believer in divine revelation 
" He who knew no sin was made sin for us, that we might be made the 
righteousness of God in him." Here then is the sinless suffering for the 
sinful, the innocent dying for the guilty ; and if this be not sacrifice, ex- 
piation, substitution, we know not what is. The case indeed is peculiar. 
There is nothing like it, there can be nothing like it, in the transactions 
of men. But the infinite Jehovah, the supreme sovereign of the uni- 
verse, the source and embodiment of all law, as well as of all grace, may 
accept such a sacrifice, in place of the direct execution of his laws, and 
present it to the world, as his selected plan for the salvation of the 
guilty. Thus is he "just," and yet " the justifier of him that belie veth 
in Jesus." The fitness and efficiency of such an appointment are shown 
in its effects. A priori it might seem foolishness, but experience has 
proved it to be the power of God, and the wisdom of God, not only for 
the relief, but for the reformation of them that believe. Our author, 
then, is justified in speaking of the cross of Christ as an exhibition of 
justice and of grace. While it relieves the conscience of the sinner from 
the burden of guilt, and inspires him with an immortal hope, it strikes a 
death-blow at his sin, and penetrates his heart with gratitude and love. 
" A cold and sceptical philosophy," says Robert Hall, Works, Vol I., p. 
11*1, "may suggest specious cavils against the doctrines of revelation upon 
this subject; cavils which derive all their force, not from the superior 
wisdom of their authors, but solely from the inadequacy of human rea- 
son to the full comprehension of heavenly mysteries. But still there is 
a simple grandeur in the fact, that God has set forth his Son to be a pro- 
pitiation, sufficient to silence the impotent clamors of sophistry, and to 
carry to all serious and humble men a firm conviction, that the law is 
exalted, and the justice of God illustriously vindicated and asserted by 
such an expedient. To minds of that description, the immaculate purity 
of the divine character, its abhorrence of sin, and its inflexible adherence 
to moral order, will present themselves in the cross, in a more impres- 
sive light than in any other object." — T 



GRACE AND LAW. 287 

odious in sin, vowing towards it a profound hatred, and 
desiring, if I may so express it, to do honor to that in- 
effable and unmerited grace ? What ! has Christ died 
for our sins, and can we love our sins ? What ! has 
Christ died because there is a law, and shall we not feel 
ourselves bound to redouble, and constantly to renew, 
our respect for the law? Human nature must have 
lost all its essential traits, all the fibres of the heart 
must have been broken, when the conviction of so great 
a benefit has failed to excite all our love ; and it would 
be a strange love, which did not produce obedience. 
He who says in his heart, " Let us sin, that grace may 
abound," must be a man who has neither understood 
nor received grace ; for the natural and reasonable con- 
clusion is this, since grace abounds, let us sin no more ! 
Thus, as I said at the commencement of these remarks, 
grace leads back to the law. 

I say more than this ; I say that it alone leads thither. 
Of this you will have no doubt, if you consider atten- 
tively what the law is. The law is not perfectly ful- 
filled, except by love. But love is not commanded, it 
is inspired. The severest injunctions, and the most 
formidable threatenings, could not create in the soul a 
single emotion of tenderness to God ; love alone gives 
birth to love. Thus, as long as we have before us only 
the law with its threatenings, we do not fulfil it in the 
spirit by which it ought to be fulfilled, that is, we do 
not fulfil it at all. The gospel has said that, " love east- 
ern out fear ;" it is also just to say, that fear casteth out 
love ; for we cannot love when we fear. It is the 
privilege and glory of the gospel, to give to the soul en- 
largement and freedom ; grace being proclaimed, and 
fear banished, we dare love, we can love. " 1 will run 



288 vinet's miscellanies. 

in the way of thy commandments," says the Psalmist, 
" when thou shalt enlarge my heart." The heart opens 
and expands, under the gentle warmth of divine love 
and the sweet rays of hope. Obedience becomes joy- 
ous ; it is no longer a painful effort, but a spontaneous 
and involuntary soaring of the renovated soul. As the 
waves of a river, once impelled in the direction of 
their channel, do not require every moment a new im- 
pulse, to continue therein, so the life, which has received 
the impulse of love, is borne away entire, and with rapid 
waves, towards the ocean of the divine will, where it 
loves to be swallowed up and lost. Thus perfect obe- 
dience is the fruit only of love, and love is the fruit only 
of grace. 

This idea receives additional force, from a more 
complete view of grace. Grace is something more 
than pardon; pardon is only the inauguration of grace. 
God exercises grace towards us, when he forgives our 
sins ; and he exercises it again, when he acts upon 
our hearts, to incline, and form them to obedience ; or, 
if you prefer it so, when he cherishes and perpetuates 
the first impressions we have received from his mercy ; 
when he incessantly awakens in us the recollection, 
the idea, the feeling of these impressions ; when he pre- 
vents the dust and gravel from obstructing the blessed 
fountain he has caused to spring from the rock, cleft 
asunder by his divine hand. All this he has promised ; 
all this he has pledged to us ; all this, then, is grace. 
But what effect will such promises, such assurance have 
upon the heart, but to soften and encourage it ? What 
disposition will he be likely to cherish towards God, 
who knows not only that God has loved him once, but 
that he loves him always, that he thinks of him, pro- 



GRACE AND LAW. 289 

vides for him, watches over him continually, conducts 
him gently and carefully, as a shepherd conducts one 
of his flock, from the mountain to the plain, bears him 
in his arms, and caresses him, as a nurse bears and 
caresses a child ; in a word, to borrow the language of 
Scripture, " is afflicted in all his afflictions ?" # This, 
we repeat, is grace ! Is it, or is it not, favorable to the 
law ? In other words, is it adapted to develop, or is it 
only fitted to stifle in us, the principle of love ? 

Who, having considered the nature of the law and 
of grace, can now say, that law and grace are incom- 
patible ? The matter is beyond dispute. But we have 
a corroboration of this truth in experience. It fully 
confirms what reason has already proved. 

In the first place, we affirm that those who admit 
grace, admit also the law. Here, it is quite evident, 
we do not speak of that dry dogmatism, that dead or- 
thodoxy, which is no more Christianity, than a statue 
is a man. We grant that there is a way of receiving 
the doctrines of the church, which leaves them without 
influence upon the life. But we speak only of those 
whose Christianity is vital, of those who have accepted 
grace with the same feeling that a shipwrecked mariner 
seizes the saving plank, which is to sustain him above 
the waves and carry him to the shore. Well, have you 
remarked, that those Christians by conviction and feel- 
ing, who confess that they are saved only by grace, 
have less respect than others for the law ? On the con- 
trary, have you not observed that what distinguishes 
them, is precisely their attachment and zeal for the 
law ? And yet, strange to tell ! some have succeeded, 
by means of certain sophisms, in spreading the idea that 

* Isaiah lxiii. 14, lxvi. 12, lxiii. 9. 
13 



290 vinet's miscellanies. 

the doctrine of such Christians is subversive of moral- 
ity, that their faith is a pillow of security, that it extin- 
guishes the necessity for good works, and opens the 
door to every vice. But their conduct has refuted ail 
these sophisms. The flesh might say, let us sin, for 
grace abounds ; but the spirit teaches them a very dif- 
ferent logic. It is true, they expect everything from 
grace, but they labor as if they expected everything 
from themselves. In the world we are surprised to see 
men, who ]ong since have made their fortune, rising- 
early and retiring late, and eating the bread of careful- 
ness, as if they had yet their fortune to make. Well, 
then, those of whom we are speaking have also made 
their fortune, — they are saved, — they say so ; but every- 
thing which a man would do, who thus far had not the 
least assurance of his salvation, they do assiduously 
and without ceasing. And they not only labor, but 
they pray ; they supplicate the Spirit to sustain them 
in their feebleness ; with fervor they exclaim, " Oh, 
who shall deliver us from this body of death ?" With 
the great apostle they repeat, " As for me, I have not 
yet reached the goal ; but this I do, leaving the things 
that are behind, and pressing to those that are before, I 
advance to the goal, to the prize of the heavenly calling 
of God in Christ Jesus." In a word, the conduct of 
these disciples of Christ is such, that it would be diffi- 
cult to find among the partisans of the law a single 
individual as careful to bridle his tongue, to repress the 
risings of passion, to observe every iota of the law, and 
to fill up his life with good works. And yet they at- 
tach to none of their works the hope of their salvation. 
What proof can be stronger that grace and law are by 
no means contradictory ! 



GRACE AND LAW. 291 

If it is true, that those who admit grace, admit also the 
law, it is, unhappily, no less true, that those who do not 
admit grace, do not admit the law. This assertion will 
not surprise us, if we recollect what the law is, and what 
it is to admit it. Who, in the elevated and spiritual 
sense we have given to these expressions, admit the 
law, who wish to do so, completely ? Not those cer- 
tainly who reject grace. Everywhere among the chil- 
dren of the world, the law of God is taken at a discount. 
Each accepts of it whatever he finds proportioned to 
his powers, and convenient to his circumstances ; each 
makes a law according to his own standard. Morality 
changes its form and dimensions with each individual. 
And, what is especially worthy of notice, in this con- 
nection, is that they make only those sacrifices to the 
law which cost them nothing, those indeed which are 
no sacrifices at all. But each appears to demand favor 
for every cherished inclination, for every reserved vice, 
for every idol he has not the courage to break ; the ava- 
ricious man for the mania of gain and accumulation, 
the sensual for the indulgences he cannot renounce, the 
vain for the distinctions by which he is flattered. In a 
word, behind conscience, and amid the deep shadows 
of the soul, each cherishes, perhaps unknown to him- 
self, some idolatrous altar. It is this which explains 
the strange preference which worldlings give to the law 
over grace. Never would they prefer the law, if they 
saw it entire ; and they prefer it only because the deli- 
cate point, the wounding point, if I may so express my- 
self, remains hidden from them, and only its flattering 
aspects, its smooth sides, its easy duties are familiar to 
their minds. But with whom do you find this disposi- 
tion to attenuate the law, or rather this incapacity to 



292 vinet's miscellanies. 

admit it ? With the partisans of grace, or with those 
who reject grace ? With the disciples of the world, or 
with the children of the gospel ? 

But are there not, you will say to me, even among 
those who do not admit salvation by grace, men pene- 
trated with the holiness of the law, and desirous of ful- 
filling it ? Ah ! my friends, you speak of a class of men 
very remarkable, and very interesting. There are men, 
I am far from denying, to w T hom God appears to mani- 
fest himself as he did to Moses on Sinai, with all the 
majesty of a lawgiver and a judge. By a celestial 
favor, which may be called a commencement of grace, 
they have felt the grandeur, necessity, and inflexibility 
of the moral law, and at the same time, have believed 
themselves capable of realizing it in their lives. Full 
of this idea they have set themselves to work ; now 
retrenching, now adding, now correcting ; — ever occu- 
pied with the desire of perfection, they have subjected 
their souls and bodies to the severest discipline. But 
when they have seen that the task had no end, the pro- 
cess no result ; when one vice extirpated has only 
enabled them to discover another ; when after all these 
corrections in detail, the sum of the life and the foun- 
dation of the soul were not essentially changed ; that 
the old man was still there, in his ill-disguised decrepi- 
tude, that the disease of which they had to relieve 
themselves, was not a disease, but death itself; that the 
great thing at issue, was not how to be cured, but how 
to live ; when, in a word, they have seen that their 
labor did not bring peace, and at the same time, have 
felt their craving for peace increasing with the efforts 
they made to satisfy it, — then was verified in them what 
Jesus Christ has said, " Whosoever will do the will of 



GRACE AND LAW. 293 

my Father, shall know whether my doctrine come from 
God, or from man." Yes, that doctrine which is noth- 
ing else than grace, they have acknowledged as one 
which proceeds from the good and holy God ; as the 
only key to the enigma which torments them. They 
have embraced it with affection ; they have sold all to 
purchase "that pearl of great price ;" and have thereby 
once more proved what we seek to establish, that "the 
law is a schoolmaster, leading to Christ ;" and that by 
the road of the law, we arrive at grace. A great num- 
ber of conversions which rejoice the church have no 
other history. 

Thus, if there are among us those who have not yet 
resolved to accept salvation from God, as a gratuitous 
gift, as the price of the sufferings of Jesus Christ, I will 
state the reason of it without circumlocution. It is 
because they do not yet know the law. They may 
speak, if they will, of righteousness, of perfection, and 
even of love ; there are many things of a terrestrial 
nature to which they might apply each of these words ; 
it is long since human language has rashly usurped the 
words of the language of Heaven. But how far is that 
which they call righteousness, perfection, and love, from 
what our Lord has denominated such! Ah! if they 
had but the faintest idea, and the feeblest desire of per- 
fection ; if the august image of regeneration, of the life 
in God, did but once shine upon their minds, what a 
revolution would be made in their ideas ! how life 
would change its aspect in their eyes ! how their views 
of happiness and of misery would be suddenly displaced ! 
How little would everything be to them, in comparison 
with that peace of God to which they did not expect to 
come, but by way of the law ! When, after having 



294 vinet's miscellanies. 

panted, for a long time, under the iron yoke of the law, 
and traced, in the field of duty, so many barren furrows, 
they should see shining upon them, at last, the divine 
promise, when the Desire of nations, the Desire of their 
hearts, should present himself before their eyes, with the 
touching dignity of Mediator ; when he should teach 
them to breathe the gentle name of Father, which their 
lips could never before utter ; when they should see the 
links of an ineffable communion, formed between their 
unhappy souls, and the eternal Spirit, O then would they 
love, would they comprehend, would they accept that 
grace which to-day is to them only an object of scandal 
and derision ! Open their eyes, O Lord, to the majestic 
splendors of thy holy law, to the sweet and tender light 
of thy compassion ! Penetrate them with a reverence 
for thy commands, and then with love for thy love. 
Lead them by the road of the law, to the secure port, 
the eternal asylum of thy grace in Jesus Christ ! 



MAN DEPRIVED OF ALL GLORY BEFORE GOD. 

" All have sinned and come short of the glory of God."*— Rom. iii. 23 



FIRST DISCOURSE 

The two truths, to which we invite your attention 
to-day, have not met the same fate in the world. The 
first is not disputed ; there is no one who does not 
acknowledge that " all men have sinned ;" but there are 
few persons disposed to admit that " man is deprived of 
all glory before God." 

There is such an agreement as to the first of these 
propositions, that it would not be necessary to dwell 
upon it, if those who are unanimous in receiving it, did 
not strangely differ from one another, and sometimes 
even from themselves, touching the extent and meaning 
of this declaration. Some of them regard sin as essen- 
tially a negative thing ; that is, as an absence, a want, a 
defect ; in their belief, no element of positive evil re- 
sides in the heart of man. Others, on the contrary, be- 
lieve that sin consists in a direct preference of evil to 
good ; that vice in man is not a weakness, but a de- 
praved force ; that the will is not seduced, but corrupted. 
You hear some explain sin as an accident of human 

* French translation — " Deprived of ail glory before God." 



296 vinet's miscellanies. 

nature; the result of the action of external circum- 
stances upon the soul. Evil, according to them, does 
not proceed from the soul, but comes to it ; the soul re- 
ceives it, does not produce it. Again, you hear others 
maintain that the germ of sin is in the heart ; that it 
seeks occasion to manifest itself; that everything may 
become an occasion to it, and that man is not a sinner 
by accident, but by nature. The one class, while 
recognizing, in the heart of man, a tendency to evil, 
regard that tendency as a primitive law of his being, an 
interior force, rivalling the moral element which gives 
it an opportunity of displaying its force, and triumphing 
with so much greater merit and honor. The others 
maintain that God has not made evil ; that an adver- 
sary has come and sown impure tares among our wheat ; 
and that harmony, not combat, is the regular and 
healthy state of every soul. 

Reason sheds very little light upon all these ques- 
tions. How many philosophers and profound thinkers 
have they not already completely defeated ! Neverthe- 
less, from all the intricacies of logic, and from the hands 
of all the sophists, one truth has always escaped, intact, 
entire, and invincible ; it is, that men have sinned ; that 
all, more or less, live in disorder ; that, as long as they 
are in the flesh, they are enveloped in sin ; and that, by 
an inexplicable contrast, they join, with the conscious- 
ness of their servitude or captivity, an irresistible feel- 
ing of guilt and responsibility. 

As to a more perfect knowledge of the nature, the 
extent, and the consequences of sin, we shall never ob- 
tain it, unless we have recourse to the Christian revela- 
tion. This revelation does not confine itself to saying 
that all men have sinned ; it throws a vivid light upon 



MAN DEPRIVED OF ALL GLORY BEFORE GOD. 297 

this declaration by the words which terminate my text : 
" They are deprived of all glory before God." To 
every one who adopts this second sentence, the mean- 
ing of the first becomes perfectly clear and precise. It 
is then to prove that man has no subject of glory before 
God that we are to apply it. 

We have already said, that this declaration meets 
with more who deny it than the first. What does it, 
in fact, mean ? It means that man has nothing in him 
which he can urge as a distinction in the eyes of God, 
as a merit or a defence ; nothing which can, in itself, 
assure us of his good-will. Is not this truth disputed ? 

We by no means dispute it, some will say ; for it is 
quite evident that all we are we owe to God ; our good 
qualities are his work ; and, in this view, the most vir- 
tuous man is included with all others in the application 
of this sentence : " They are deprived of all occasion of 
glory before God/ 5 

We admit it willingly, and the apostle himself would 
equally admit it. It was St. James who said to the 
primitive Christians, " Every good gift and every perfect 
gift cometh down from the Father of lights ;" he alone 
produces in us the power both to will and to act, accord- 
ing to his good pleasure. "What have we that we 
have not received from him ; and if we have received 
it, why do we boast as if we had not received it ?" But 
it is clear that it is from another point of view that the 
apostle reasons in the chapter where our text is found, 
and that it has another meaning than the one which 
these persons would give it. 

It is not merely a homage which the apostle would 
render to the author of every perfect gift ; it is a con- 
demnation he would pronounce. Upon whom ? Upon 

13* 



298 VINET S MISCELLANIES. 

man in every condition ? No, but upon man unregen- 
erate, upon man in his natural state. And the expression 
of the apostle evidently signifies that as long as man has 
not accepted the benefit of the redemption by Jesus 
Christ, he is, with relation to God, in a state of reproba- 
tion, from which he has in himself absolutely nothing 
that can deliver him. This proposition, I believe, will 
find a considerable number of opponents. 

We do not wish to burden this sentence with what 
evidently does not belong to it. We do not wish to 
confound two distinct spheres. In the presence of his 
fellow-man, man is not absolutely without glory. Man 
can offer to man something to be admired and praised, 
or at least to be respected. Indeed, it would be to 
belie our own consciousness, and place ourselves in an 
untenable position, in all cases to refuse a sentiment of 
approbation to the conduct of our fellow- creatures. In 
other words, man is frequently forced to recognize in 
man something which he is obliged to call virtue. 

Virtue he discovers and recognizes not merely in the 
Christian, whose moral nature has been renewed by the 
gospel, but in others. Far from all admiration being 
confined to that quarter, the admiration of men, nay 
more, of Christians, is frequently directed towards the 
natural or unregenerate man. Whatever may be the 
harsh assertions of an ill-understood orthodoxy, it is 
certain that the Christian who is the most disposed, in 
theory, to refuse all reality and all value to human 
virtues, every moment contradicts himself in practice. 
A benefit received from one of his fellow-men moves 
his heart ; he speaks of gratitude, he is, in reality, grate- 
ful ; that is to say, he recognizes, in his benefactor, a 
benevolent and disinterested intention ; he attributes to 



MAN DEPRIVED OF ALL GLORY BEFORE GOD. 299 

the action, for which he has occasion to rejoice, another 
value than the personal profit he derives from it, an in- 
trinsic, or a moral value. His benefactor is something 
else in his eyes than a tree, well planted, which bears 
spontaneously good fruits • he sees in him a generous 
will, which, without being incited from without, has 
used its capacity and means to procure an advantage 
to a sensitive being. I know, indeed, that a narrow 
system may, at length, re-act upon the soul, and reduce 
it to its own standard, but it cannot tear from the soul 
those instincts so deeply rooted in it. And all that such 
a system can do, with reference to the essential nature 
of the soul, is to reduce it to silence, but not to stifle it. 
In favor of the reality of human virtue, in some de- 
gree, we boldly invoke the testimony of all men, if not 
their express and voluntary testimony, at least that 
sudden and irresistible testimony which may be called 
the voice of nature. We shall obtain from them a tes- 
timony even more explicit than this, if we can, for a 
moment, induce them to descend into the arena where 
the facts wait to be combated. Of these facts we shall, 
without hesitation, abandon to them a great number. 
We shall consent to reject, as far from the sphere of 
virtuous actions, all those which may be explained by 
custom or prejudice ; all those in reference to which, 
interest, gross or delicate, may have played a part ; all 
those which the applause of men might or could follow. 
They may do with such actions what they please ; we 
defend them not ; our cause can dispense with them. 
But as to those in which virtue can be explained only 
by virtue, — those which have been performed far from 
the eyes of man, and without any reasonable hope of 
ever attracting their attention, — those which, so far 



300 vinet's miscellanies. 

from having been able to count upon their suffrage, 
had in prospect only their contempt, — those in which 
opprobrium could not be converted into glory by the 
enthusiastic adherence of a certain number of parti- 
sans, — those, in a word, which never could have ex- 
isted, unless there had been in the hearts of their 
authors an idea of duty, or a sentiment of disinterest- 
edness ; all such they must leave us ; and however 
small may be their number, and however widely sepa- 
rated by great distances on the earth, and by centuries 
of time, we believe that they sufficiently protest against 
a vain denial, and in their mournful rareness, prove the 
presence and perpetual action of a moral principle in 
the bosom of the human race. 

We have, in this cause, the gospel itself in our favor. 
We see there the same writers who have taught us the 
entire fall and condemnation of man, unhesitatingly 
according to human virtues those praises which could 
not be accorded to them in a system which denies all 
moral value in the actions of men. It is true they ac- 
knowledged that, in an elevated sense, there is none 
righteous, no, not one ; that none doeth good, no, not 
one ; that all flesh has corrupted his way ; but, after 
all, the same writers praise a barbarous people who re- 
ceived them, after their shipwreck, with much humani- 
ty (Acts xxviii. 2 ;) they return thanks for the affection- 
ate care of a man, who, without knowing them, and 
without expecting anything from them, did them all the 
good their situation required (Acts xxviii. 7.) And St. 
Paul, the very one who takes away from man all occa- 
sion of glory before God, acknowledges in his Epistle 
to the Romans, that the Gentiles do naturally, at least 
in a certain measure, the things which are according to 



MAN DEPRIVED OF ALL GLORY BEFORE GOD. 301 

law, and by this means he shows, that what is written 
in the law is also written in their hearts. After these 
testimonies a Christian can have no difficulty in admit- 
ting a principle of action in man, different from that of 
self-interest ; and this principle being once recognized 
and defined, it is of little consequence by what name it 
is called. 

Singular thing ! it is among the followers of Chris- 
tianity, and among them only, that our position ought 
to find opponents. But we see rising against it, in the 
ranks of those who oppose Christianity, as great a num- 
ber of adversaries. It is sometimes against the natural 
man that we have to defend the reality of natural vir- 
tues. It is before man himself that man can scarcely 
find favor. It is man that refuses to man the occasion 
of glory which we have not hesitated to accord to him. 
The very same persons who tax Christianity with mis- 
anthropy and exaggeration, when it proclaims the 
nothingness of human virtues, are often, in the practice 
of life, the most sceptical of all virtue. They demolish, 
stone by stone, the edifice which they are eager and in 
haste to re-construct, when the question is agitated 
about finding a retreat against the overpowering asser- 
tions of the gospel. Ready to defend against it, in gen- 
eral, the goodness, and even perfection of our nature, 
they contradict themselves, in detail, in a manner the 
most striking. To them all men are good, but each 
man is bad. Their distrust and caprice give credit to 
no action and to no man. Nothing beautiful or good 
escapes the corrosion of their cruel interpretations. 
They have in reserve for each good action a bitter and 
degrading explanation. When a beautiful fruit falls 
into their hands, their first idea is not to nourish them- 



332 VINET S MISCELLANIES. 

selves by it, but to find there the hidden worm which 
gnaws its interior. Thus their habitual practice belies 
their theory. But what shall be said of those who ad- 
mit into their minds two contradictory theories ; of 
those who, reproaching Christianity with the harshness 
of its doctrines, have adopted, according to their own 
estimate, opinions as harsh, and perhaps more so; of 
those who, analyzing the human heart, flatter them- 
selves that they have discovered (happy discovery !) 
that all its fibres vibrate to that of selfishness ; who ask 
man to sign with them the sentence of his own dis- 
honor, and yet demand a glory in compensation for 
that which they have taken away from us ? There are 
times when this bitter contempt of human nature, this 
denial of all moral worth in man, becomes a general 
belief, and almost a popular instinct. This is seen es- 
pecially at the termination of great and cruel deceptions 
on society, when having, through faith in its leaders, 
given its adherence to seducing theories, confirmed by 
imposing words, it discovers that it has been deceived, 
and in the disgust which follows its previous intoxica- 
tion, includes in an equal contempt all professions of 
faith, all protestations of benevolence, of justice, and 
devotion. The profanation of words leads to the con- 
tempt of things. In morality, as w T ell as in religion, 
unbelief is the necessary re-action of hypocrisy. In 
the train of religious contests ordinarily comes religious 
scepticism ; and wars of opinion, after an enormous ex- 
penditure of maxims, declamations, and protestations, 
end by giving birth to moral scepticism. 

This kind of disgust which usually follows in the train 
of great social commotions, we produce at pleasure in 
ourselves, during quiet and ordinary times, by the gen- 



MAN DEPRIVED OF ALL GLORY BEFORE GOD. 303 

eral contemplation of society and the study of history. 
Those whom their individual relations might have led 
to accord some respect to humanity, in passing from 
individuals to the race, insensibly change their views. 
It is rare that in this aspect of mankind, the conviction 
of the degradation of human nature does not fasten it- 
self strongly upon their soul. A conviction so much 
more painful, when identifying itself, so to speak, with 
the consciousness of the whole human race, they feel 
on its behalf an immense remorse. The guilt of the 
whole human family is heaped upon their conscience, 
as that of an accomplice. Their pride yields in spite 
of them to this humiliating fellowship ; because, in view 
of so many transgressions, revealing in their own heart 
the hidden germ from which unhappy circumstances 
might cause the same iniquities to spring forth, they 
feel themselves condemned by the crimes of society, 
degraded by its degradation, humbled by its shame.* 

* If humanity is corrupted in the mass, it would certainly be very 
difficult to prove that it is pure in the details. If the race has fallen, 
surely individuals cannot be innocent. That there are among them 
diversities of character, some being better and some worse, at least 
with reference to certain aspects of character, none will deny ; but that 
the taint of sin has, more or less, reached the heart of every man, all 
experience and observation go to prove. Even if an individual were 
conscious of some purity, ought not the very fact that he belongs to a 
degenerate race, to excite in him some suspicion as to Ms own integrity ? 
Can he condemn the whole of his kind, and acquit himself? Can he 
look upon the wreck of humanity, and feel that he alone has escaped ? 
Can he complacently say, Man is sinful, but I am holy ; man is fallen, 
but I am safe ? Impossible ! For each man is a part of humanity, and 
must yield, in spite of himself, to that "humiliating fellowship." If he 
does not, if he separates himself from his fellow-sinners, and says, 
" Stand by, for I am holier than thou," what estimate is formed of him 
by others, and even by those who are the greatest sticklers for the 
natural innocence of man ? Do they not denounce him as a pharisee or 



304 vinet's miscellanies. 

This is not all. How, say they, confusedly, can gen- 
erous juices circulate in a tree with that poisonous sap? 
And when, not only in the same nation, but also in the 
same individual, we see developed together the most 
ordinary vices by the side of the loftiest virtues, the 
most unnatural sentiments by the side of the noblest 
emotions, are we not led irresistibly to doubt the reality 
of good in the midst of so much evil; and, at the sight 
of these golden particles scattered in the mud, to sup- 
pose that this noble metal is not actually there, but that 
a singular play of light from above has, at times, given 
to some portions of the mud the appearance and glitter 
of gold ? Let us examine, let us analyze, and we shall 
be surprised to see how many virtues are entirely false, 
how many actions, good in themselves, are dishonored 
by an unholy motive, how many others by an admix- 
ture of impurity. Let us demand from ourselves an 
account of our admiration ; by tarnishing the principle, 
we tarnish the object. Let us inquire if the enthusiasm 
we have felt in view of great historical virtues was en- 
tirely pure, and if it had not for its principle, less the 
love of virtue than the love of glory. Let us inquire if 
virtue, stripped of every poetical circumstance, reduced 
to the persevering but uniform, the zealous but con- 
cealed observance of duties which spring from a vulgar 

a hypocrite ? And do they not thus recognize the truth of what the 
Scriptures have said, that " there is no difference, for all have sinned 
and come short of the glory of God ?" We cheerfully admit that man, 
though fallen, has a noble nature. It is a palace deserted. Enough of 
its primitive grandeur remains to prove that God once dwelt there. 
Its silence and desolation are mournful, but they are the silence and 
desolation of a majestic ruiu, beautiful even in decay. Besides, the 
materials are entire, and may yet be re-constructed on a new found a 
tion, and once more attract the presence of the King of kings. — T. 



MAN DEPRIVED OF ALL GLORY BEFORE GOD. 305 

position, if virtue under such a form, and the less sus- 
pected on that very account, does not inspire us with 
an interest comparatively feeble ; and if this be not a 
sentiment quite as moral as that which transported us 
from that dull and gloomy horizon to a dazzling one, 
where great achievements and mighty intellectual 
powers enhanced in our eyes the qualities of great 
hearts. If our admiration thus permits itself to be cor- 
rupted, will virtue itself be incorruptible ? If glory has 
deceived our enthusiasm, has it exerted less influence 
on the great actions which awakened it in us ? And 
must we not place to its account a part, alas ! a very 
great part of the virtues we admire ? 

You see, thus, that if the opposition of one class of 
religious men gives a defender of human virtues some- 
thing to do, the opposition of another class of opponents 
subjects him to no less embarrassment. For we con- 
fess, that after the knowledge of human nature we 
believe ourselves to have acquired, we should, to-day, 
find a difficulty, if we wished to do anything more than 
save a few remains from the wreck. For we believe 
in the wreck of humanity ; we believe that its unfortu- 
nate ship has perished ; the remains of that great catas- 
trophe float on the waves. A few of these are yet fit 
for some use, but none of them can bear to the shore 
the least of the passengers. Convinced fully that man 
is fallen, we cannot, however, admit that he has become 
an entire stranger to every moral sentiment ; we think 
we can see, through his corruption, traces, — sometimes 
brilliant traces, — of justice and benevolence, to which 
we cannot refuse our admiration ; in a word, we believe 
that man is not stripped of all occasion of glory before 
man. 



306 vinet's miscellanies. 

Let man be satisfied with us; we have done him 
justice. Let him surround himself with these splendid 
rags ; let him admire them ; let him try to clothe and 
adorn his nakedness with them ; we agree to it ; we 
go farther ; — we respect those rags, and we know why. 
But whatever high value he may place upon his proud 
indigence, what peace and hope can he derive from 
that incoherent and contradictory assemblage of the 
most extravagant moral elements ; that will which ac- 
knowledges the law, yet tramples it under foot, which 
loves duty and yet hates it ; that heart which receives 
with the same favor, and cherishes together, passions 
the most brutal, and devotion the most heroic ? Will 
he persuade himself that all in him is good; or that 
the good can compensate for the bad ; or that this mix- 
ture constitutes order itself, and that God wills the bad 
as well as the good ? A craving for unity, stronger 
than all reasonings, appeals to him against it. An 
anguish stronger than all the consolations of a false 
wisdom, repeats to him that there is no safety but in 
unity. A confused sentiment warns him that a good 
which does not conquer the bad is not the true good ; 
and that a virtue which leaves a vice to dwell by its 
side is not true virtue ; that true virtue dwelling in the 
centre of the soul would exclude, by its very presence, 
everything which is not virtue ; that what he has hon- 
ored, under this name, is not then truly virtue, but its 
shadow or its remembrance ; while a voice of condem- 
nation resounds hoarsely, during the whole of his life, 
above the applauses which by turns he gives and re- 
ceives. Cruel doubts ! Frightful shadows ! What will 
disperse you ? What will shed upon the close of this 
gloomy career a consoling light ? The light which will 



MAN DEPRIVED OF ALL GLORY BEFORE GOD. 307 

illumine the past will illumine also the future ; that 
which will explain the evil will also indicate the cure ; 
it is under the ruins of our ancient dwelling that we 
must seek the foundations of the new. Unity, light, 
and hope we find all at once, in the word which has 
said to all men without distinction, " Ye are stripped 
of all glory before God." Let us together consider that 
great truth. 



MAN DEPRIVED OF ALL GLORY BEFORE GOD. 

<{ All have sinned and come short of the glory of God."— Rom. iii. 23. 



SECOND DISCOURSE 



In a preceding discourse, we have said that man has 
some occasions of glory before man. Poor distinctions 
which he disputes to himself, and which, after a more 
attentive examination, he very often tears to pieces 
with a blush. Of what remains, of what ought not to 
be refused him, he cannot make a counterpoise to his 
misery ; his shame, even in his own eyes, will always 
be greater than his glory. The general condition of 
humanity, even in eras of culture and in centres of civ- 
ilization, always appears to him one of degradation and 
ruin. This is a conclusion to which he is almost infal- 
libly conducted by a profound study of human affairs. 
It is a result also to which many good men are brought 
by the mere examination of their own hearts, and the 
rigorous analysis of their actions.* Such is the con- 

* It may be thought strange that, while good men readily confess 
their sinfulness, bad men generally deny it. Sceptics, it is found, are 
ordinarily proud and self-conceited. But some of them have been com- 
pelled to confess their conscious weakness and imperfection. Few men 
were probably more calmly and proudly self-conceited than Goethe, 
who, with a clear and majestic intellect, had, we fear, an earthly and 



MAN DEPRIVED OF ALL GLORY BEFORE GOD. 309 

dition of man ; such is his glory ; let him take posses- 
sion of it ; but let him not stretch forth his hand to a 
higher glory, the glory which comes from God. This 
we absolutely refuse him. 

Already, by his own reflections, whether he form a 
moderate or an extravagant estimate of his moral 
worth, man is necessarily driven to acknowledge that 
he cannot pretend to much glory before God. That 
God, whose piercing eyes try the hearts and the reins, 
can see there a thousand imperfections, which we do 
not see ; and since nothing can corrupt his judgment, 
nothing can induce us to hope that he will fall into the 
slightest mistake respecting us. Moreover, he is a God, 
perfectly holy, " whose eyes/' saith the Scriptures, " are 
too pure to look upon iniquity." When he sees evil in 
the heart, he does not receive from it those feeble im- 
pressions which we do. He has a horror of everything 
which violates order ; and this horror does not, like ours, 
attach itself exclusively to those actions which are more 
repugnant to our feelings than others, or which more 
sensibly disturb social relations. Far above such dis- 
tinctions by the majesty of his nature, his divine im- 
partiality attaches itself to the principle of actions ; it is 
by their principle he judges them ; and from this point 
of view, he does not always mark, with a stronger rep- 
robation, the enormities which appal us, than the defects 

sensual heart ; a fact of which he was not altogether unconscious. The 
following, from Eckerman's Conversations, p. 309, is an indirect, but 
striking testimony to this fact. " It is from olden time,'' said Goethe, 
" said and repeated, that man should strive to know himself. To this 
singular requisition no man either has fully answered, or shall answer. 
# * * # ]y[ an j s a darkened being ; he knows not whence he comes 
nor whither he goes ; he knows little of the world, and less of himself, 
I know not myself, and may God protect me from it." — T. 



310 VINET S MISCELLANIES. 

to which our blame scarcely reaches. His justice, all 
divine, by disarranging our classifications, raises all to 
the same level, and gives the name of crime to customs 
which do not cost us the slightest scruple. Not only 
our vices, but our imperfections, our pretended indiffer- 
ent actions, frequently our very virtues, rush at his 
bidding, to swell the ranks, where already crowd so 
many obvious crimes. Judged by this holy and formi- 
dable Judge, even the good man is transformed into a 
criminal, and models of righteousness appear as models 
of iniquity. If it is thus that God judges us, and how 
can we believe that he judges otherwise, there is doubt- 
less left us very little occasion of glory before God. 
But is it not possible for you to judge of this by your- 
selves, by placing your minds, as far as may be, in the 
point of view occupied by your Creator? You can 
certainly do this, by considering the perfect law, where, 
as in a mirror, the divine perfection itself is reflected. 
The perfect law, or the law of perfection, has, in its 
application, no other limits than those of possibility. 
You need not consider it as a whole ; take only one of 
its articles, that which commands us to do towards our 
neighbor, whatever we should desire him to do towards 
us. I am not afraid that you will refuse this precept ; 
no one refuses it. Those who do not wish to hear us 
speak of Christian doctrine, willingly receive Christian 
morality ; they pride themselves on feeling its beauty ; 
they exalt it above all others. Singular prepossession ! 
For the morality ought to be much more offensive to 
them than the doctrine ; the doctrine is consoling, the 
morality discouraging. But however that may be, 
judge yourselves by this one article ; for if this article 
be true, if it ought to be maintained in all its force, if it 



MAN DEPRIVED OF ALL GLORY BEFORE GOD. 311 

does not behoove you to mutilate or weaken it, ac- 
knowledge that it condemns you. To treat your neigh- 
bor as you would that he should treat you ! Such is the 
precept, — but pray, when have you observed it; or 
rather what day, what hour, have you not violated it ? 
This precept, you know, is not negative ; it embraces 
all the offices, all the cares, all the devotion and ardor 
of charity. It supposes that he who would observe it, 
shall not live for himself; that the welfare of his breth- 
ren shall become the principal motive of his life ; that 
he shall include the whole world in his embrace, by the 
power of a generous love. Well, this positive aspect 
of the precept I will give up to you; and suppose, 
against all philosophical truth, that the negative part is 
independent of the other, and that charity may be con- 
fined to abstinence and omission. Thus, if any one ab- 
stain from doing to another the evil which he does not 
wish to receive from him, he is, by that alone, to be re- 
garded as charitable. Well, have you, even in this 
limited sense, fulfilled the law ? Do you fulfil it, when 
you use your right with rigor, and when no obligation 
compels you to use it thus ? Do you fulfil it, when you 
give your neighbor examples which it would be inju- 
rious to you to receive ? Do you fulfil it, when, with- 
out necessity, you wound his self-love, you whose self- 
love is so sensitive ? Do you fulfil it, when you refuse 
him those attentions, which you are yourself so eager to 
receive ? Do you fulfil it, when you judge his actions 
with an unfeeling severity, which you would not pardon 
in him, if he were to exercise it towards you ? Of two 
duties, one, at least, is imposed upon you ; either you 
must abstain from these things, or renounce whatever, 
up to this moment, you have required from another ; 



312 vinet's miscellanies. 

you must either give what you have required from him, 
or not require from him what you are unwilling to give 
him. Have you fulfilled this law? Have you not 
violated it every moment ? Pass in review, in the same 
way, all the other articles of the law. Examine your- 
selves under the various relations it embraces. Hear 
its decision ; for it is as if God himself spoke. Then 
estimate your deficiencies, and see the ground covered 
with your broken merits, your prostrate virtues. You 
went to meet God, in pompous apparel, and with a 
magnificent train ; lo ! you have arrived in his presence 
through the double hedge of the precepts of the law ; 
look now, on each side of you, look behind you ! What 
remains to you of that proud train ? Are you not alone, 
and without support before God, and reduced humbly 
to beg mercy from him, whose justice you came proudly 
to claim ? 

I have said mercy, for without going further, I can 
already say it. The law in fact demanded nothing less 
than its full observance; your conscience also demanded 
as much ; for at each duty neglected, at each trans- 
gression committed, it failed not in a single instance, 
to utter the cry of alarm. Even if you had fulfilled all 
its requirements, you must yet have placed yourselves in 
the rank of unprofitable servants. If, then, you have not 
been raised to the rank even of unprofitable servants, 
what is your position ? And, to go to the bottom of the 
matter, what do you think of those frequent, those per- 
petual transgressions of the law, except that you have 
not loved it ? For, if perchance you have fulfilled some 
of its precepts, you did so, because it happened to be 
agreeable to your inclinations, while the law in itself, 
the law as law, was hateful to you ; and hence, if you 



MAN DEPRIVED OF ALL GLORY BEFORE GOD. 313 

have occasionally fallen in with it, you have never 
obeyed it. You will, therefore, conclude with me that 
you are rebels; that some acts of obedience, apparent 
and accidental, cannot remove from you that terrible 
distinction ; and that mercy, not justice, is your only 
resource. 

At this point, it seems to us, that we have said enough, 
to reach the end of all Christian preaching, that is, to 
cast the sinner trembling at the foot of mercy. But we 
do not forget what is the precise subject of this medita- 
tion. We have shown thus far, or rather we have 
ascertained with you, that man has few occasions of 
boasting before God. We must go still further ; we 
must prove, according to the declaration of the apostle, 
that " all occasion for boasting is excluded." 

To glorify himself before God ! And for what ? For 
having, whether in virtue or in vice, incessantly dis- 
obeyed him ? For this is the crime which equalizes, 
among all men, all moral conditions. Other iniquities 
are individual ; this is the great iniquity of the human 
race. Virtuous or vicious, we have all excluded God 
from our thoughts, from our motives of action, from 
our life. We have all equally violated the first, the 
greatest of all obligations. We are all, in the same 
degree, transgressors of eternal order. 

Let a man, (I will, for a moment, suppose what is im- 
possible,) let a man present himself to us. who can say, 
I have observed all the commandments of»the law from 
my youth, only I have cared nothing for God. I have 
fulfilled my duties, only I have neglected the one which 
is most essential. I have been virtuous in every point, 
only I have committed the greatest of crimes. With 
how much propriety shall we say to him, You have not 

14 



314 VINET S MISCELLANIES. 

been virtuous at all ; that is impossible. From the 
same source cannot spring sweet water and bitter. 
The same soul cannot contain elements so contradic- 
tory. The mind refuses to conceive an alliance so 
monstrous. And if you persist in calling virtue, acts 
which we admit enjoy the esteem of men, you compel 
us to affirm that such acts cannot constitute true vir- 
tue. Detached from the true principle of all good, they 
wither, as necessarily as a flower separated from its 
roots, and " the jealous God" can never honor a proud 
virtue which has never honored him. 

And let no one say that this is a dispute about words ; 
that obedience only is essential ; and that he who obeys 
the law and his conscience obeys God. If the one is 
identical with the other, if the one costs no more effort 
than the other, whence comes that universal repugnance 
to pass from the one to the other, from the law to the 
lawgiver, from the conscience to God ? Whence comes 
that inconceivable preference of the thing to the per- 
son, of the idea to its source, of the abstraction to the 
living being ? Why will not man obey the voice of 
God, except indirectly ? Why obstinately refuse an 
immediate contact with his heavenly Father ? If he 
respects the law as coming from God, if he honors con- 
science as the voice of God, whence comes it that God 
himself is not the direct end and object of his homage ? 
The truth is, it is not God he honors in the law and in 
conscience, but himself. He appropriates these two ele- 
ments, and these two authorities, to his own use, trans- 
forms them into his own being, and by adoring them as 
a part of himself, in reality adores himself. 

What imports it, you say, that I neglect the lawgiver, 
provided I observe the law ? This idea would be admis- 



MAN DEPRIVED OF ALL GLORY BEFORE GOD. 315 

sible, to some extent, in our relations with the lawgivers 
of this world. They are but men, your equals, mere 
representatives of the society of which you form a part, 
simple organs of the ideas of justice and order, which a 
higher power has deposited in society. They possess 
no dignity, the source of which is in themselves. It is 
not thus with God ; he represents no one. He is not 
the organ of law ; he is the living law. The law itself 
is not law, except as it comes from him. He is him- 
self the supreme and final reason of all that he does, 
the supreme and final reason of all ideas. While it is 
the law which we honor in the person of the legislator, 
here it is the legislator that we must honor in the law. 
To observe the law without respect to the lawgiver, is 
actually to violate the law ; for our first duty relates to 
the lawgiver. To respect the ideas, and neglect him 
who is their author and source, who is the cause of 
their truth, and of whom those ideas are only the 
shadow or the reflection, is the most appalling of con- 
tradictions. To admit conscience and duty, justice 
and injustice, as realities, and to make an abstraction 
of the Being who alone is the sanction of these ideas, 
who alone gives them a basis, who alone binds the chain 
of them to a fixed point, who alone, we may say, ex- 
plains their presence in the human mind, and renders 
them conceivable, is a profound absurdity. Finally, let 
us try to extend and elevate our conception a little. 
Let us transport it, as much as our feebleness will 
admit, to the idea of the God of Moses ; of him who 
named himself I am that I am ; of the necessary Being, 
the universal Being, say rather, the Being ; of that 
God who is not an idea, a form, an abstraction, but 
Being ; of that living, infinite personality, who is essen- 



316 vinet's miscellanies. 

tially one, of that eternal Me, of whom the me of each 
of us is only a mysterious emanation ; of that Being 
who is the source of all things, and constitutes our 
power, our breath, our life, nay, all in us which is posi- 
tive and true.* 

* This is a sublime definition of God, but to say that the me of each 
of us, in other words, that which constitutes our personality, is an ema- 
nation of God, is liable to be misunderstood. If by this expression it is 
meant that the soul of man was created by God, without any reference 
to the mode of that creation, then it is true. But if it is meant to con- 
vey the idea that the soul is a part of God, a portion of his essence or 
substance, which has proceeded, or flowed out, so to speak, from his in- 
finite pleroma, or fulness, then it may be denied, as unphilosophical and 
unscriptural. God is a unity, an infinite, undivided and unchangeable 
essence. He cannot be increased or diminished. Nothing can be given 
to him, or taken from him. He cannot, therefore, give off portions of 
himself ; nor can these flow from him of their own accord, as rays from 
the sun, or streams from the fountain. That he has all the treasures of 
wisdom and knowledge, that he can perform all possible things, and 
bestow all possible blessings, is cheerfully granted. But he cannot (with 
reverence be it spoken) impart any portion of his own infinite essence, 
he cannot divide or diminish, multiply or increase, what properly con- 
stitutes himself, his personality, or, as the French and Germans call it, 
the infinite and eternal Me. No creature, then, however highly en- 
dowed, is, properly speaking, God, or a part of God. He may be made 
in the image of God, that is to say, he may be created a spiritual, intel- 
ligent, and moral agent ; but he cannot partake of his essence or per- 
sonality, which is equally incapable of division or multiplication. 

God has the power of creation ; an original and peculiar, as well as 
mysterious and amazing power. He speaks, and it is done ; he com- 
mands, and it stands fast. But to say that he creates by giving out 
portions of himself, or parting with his own essence, now forming souls 
of it, and now bodies, is assuming what can never be proved, and what 
seems to contradict our most necessary conceptions of the nature of 
God. For if God creates thus, then all spirits, and not only so, but all 
matter is God. Everything is God, and God is everything. This is the 
idea of Pantheism. It is the very basis of the doctrine of an impersonal 
God, from which the atheism and impiety of " young Germany" are 
legitimately born. For if the premises be just, the conclusion is logical 



MAN DEPRIVED OF ALL GLORY BEFORE GOD. 317 

After this, is there one of us who will dare to say 
that it is the law which concerns us, and not the Law- 
giver ? 

You place your Creator on the same level with a 
human legislator, and because the latter demands noth- 
ing more than obedience, you claim that God will not 
demand more. But in the divine Legislator, do you 

and irresistible. But the doctrine of Pantheism, whether it appear in the 
gorgeous dreams of oriental theosophy, the subtleties of Spinoza and 
Hegel, or the blasphemous ravings of Gutzkow and Heine, is neither, in 
its premises or conclusions, the doctrine of the Bible nor of common 
sense. For while God is " in all, and through all," he is above all and 
independent of all. The soul of man is a creation, so is his body, so are 
all souls and all bodies. " In the beginning, God created the heavens and 
the earth." " He said, Let there be light, and there was light." He 
said, " Let us make man in our image," and man was made in his 
image. But while the soul exhibited the image of God, it was neither 
God nor a part of God, but a separate being, a free and responsible 
agent, under law to the Almighty. " Our God made the heavens/' 
"From him cometh every good and perfect gift." The God of the 
Bible, then, the God of Christianity, is a personal God, an infinite but 
independent Intelligence, a holy and ever-blessed Sovereign, to whom 
we owe the homage of the heart, the obedience of the life. 

This is a subject of great importance, and cannot be discussed in a 
note ; but we could not justify ourselves in passing it over in silence. 
Our author's views are, doubtless, scriptural and philosophical, but the 
expression in the text required this explanation. His definition of God 
is remarkably striking, and reminds us of Sir Isaac Newton's, which is 
the best we have ever seen. We subjoin it with a translation. The 
original may be found in Dugald Stewart's Dissertations, Part II, p. 105, 
Note. 

" Deus eternus est et infinitus, omnipotens et omnisciens ; id est, durat 
ab aeterno in seternum, et adest ab infinito in infinitum. Nc-n est aeter- 
nitas et infinitas, sed seternus et infinitus ; non est duratio et spatium sed 
durat et adest. Durat semper et adest ubique, et existendo semper et 
ubique, durationem et spatium constituit." — " God is eternal and infi- 
nite, omnipotent and omniscient ; that is, he endures from eternity to 
eternity, and is present from infinity to infinity. He is not eternity and 
infinity, but eternal and infinite ; he is not duration and space, but en- 



318 vinet's miscellanies. 

recognize nothing more than a legislator ? Is there 
nothing but the law between you and God ? Is it the 
law which has conferred upon you so many means of 
enjoyment and happiness ? Is it the law which has 
conceded to you the empire of nature ? Is it the law 
which has formed between you and your kindred the 
mysterious and delightful union of hearts ? No ; in 
these immense benefits, one of which would suffice for 
the happiness of beings less privileged, the Lawgiver 
conceals himself, and the Father appears, a father 
whose goodness transcends all thought. And you think 
that a cold and servile obedience can acquit you before 
him ? You think that the power to love which he has 
planted in your bosom ought never to remount to him ! 
That all your obedience should not be love ! That 
your heart should not seek beyond the law and beyond 
the Lawgiver, the Father, the Goodness, the love, from 
whom proceed for you, life, and even love and felicity ! 
And you say coldly, unnatural creatures! We obey, — 
it is enough ; are we not acquitted ? And of that law 
which you pretend to fulfil, do you not understand that 
you have violated the first and the greatest command- 
ment, by refusing to God love for love ! No, — tell me 
not that in the law you honor the Lawgiver ; unless, 
perhaps, he should be honored by fear ! Tell me not 

dures and is present. He endures always and is present everywhere, 
and by existing always and everywhere, constitutes duration and space." 
"What a comment on the I am: that I am:, of Moses ! 
" Tell them I am ! Jehovah said 
To Moses, while earth heard in dread, 

And smitten to the heart, 
At once above, beneath, around, 
All nature, without voice or sound, 
Replied Lokd, thou art !" 



MAN DEPRIVED OF ALL GLORY BEFORE GOD. 319 

that your homage secures your felicity, unless, perhaps, 
a feeling, which, in all its power, could not draw a 
demon from hell, may suffice by itself to introduce you 
into heaven ! The law, practised in such a spirit, kills, 
does not save you. 

You honor conscience ! Indeed, I believe it. It 
would be difficult not to honor it, to a certain extent. 
It would not pardon neglect. Invisible sting, planted 
by the side of the soul, the least irregular motion impels 
the soul against that hidden point, and inflicts a painful 
wound. But if conscience, after God had been exiled 
from the human heart, still remained there, it would be 
incessantly to warn it of God. But who receives that 
warning ? You recognize the authority of conscience ; 
you say that you have frequently heard it ; but you 
ascend no higher. Thing truly inconceivable ! Sepa- 
rated from the idea of God, conscience, in our nature, 
is nothing but a mockery, an enigma, a nonentity. 
Well, it is on this very footing that the greater part of 
mankind admit it. Indeed, you see some, to whom the 
idea of the judgments of God and a final responsibility 
is completely foreign, who at least reject it, and who, 
nevertheless, speak fluently of conscience as their inter- 
nal guide ; forgetting that if conscience has no one 
from whom it derives authority and to whom it can 
appeal, if it does not deduce its power from God, it has 
nothing to say, nothing to command. Why is it heard ? 
Why is it acknowledged ? Because this is not a mat- 
ter of choice. Conscience is in us ; nor does it depend 
on us that it should not be there ; absent, we cannot 
recall it ; present, we cannot deny its presence. But 
its presence, often otherwise unpleasant, and viewed 
with an evil eye, is not the presence of God. Con- 



320 vinet's miscellanies. 

science is only the permanent and indelible imprint of 
a powerful hand, which after having pressed us, is with- 
drawn from us, or rather from which a hostile force 
has torn us. The hand is gone, the imprint remains. 
That mysterious impression, which w T e have not made 
upon ourselves, leads the man who reflects, to a con- 
fused idea of God. It causes him to infer, and to seek 
after the absent hand ; but, by itself, it cannot enable 
him to find it. 

Would you have a sensible idea of conscience in 
man ? An ungrateful child, impelled by infatuated 
pride, and seduced by evil counsels, escapes from the 
paternal roof to taste an independence which has been 
represented to him as the greatest of blessings. He 
plunges into the world, without means or prospect. 
His disorders and excesses, though they may not pro- 
voke the severity of civil justice, mark him, in all 
places, under his distinctive traits, as a rebellious and 
unnatural son. But in the midst of his wanderings, 
something indicates that he is derived from a good 
family ; in his language, a happy choice of expression ; 
in his manners, something superior ; in his behavior, 
even honorable actions, which form a striking contrast 
with the general character of his life ; in a word, a 
lingering something which it is difficult to efface from 
the original habits of a man well brought up, accompa- 
nies him into all the places and all the societies where 
such merit is least appreciated. It seems as if we 
might expect every species of evil from a being who 
has voluntarily broken the heart of a father ; and yet, 
quite often, when the seduction of example impels 
him to overleap the last barriers of honor, he hesitates, 
he draws back ; self-respect appears to hold him still. 



MAN DEPRIVED OF ALL GLORY BEFORE GOD. 321 

Clinging to him, in spite of himself, the recollections of 
his first condition follow him, surround him, and inter- 
cept, on the way to his heart, a part at least of the 
pestilential malaria which the world exhales, and pre- 
vents him from running from excess to excess, and 
from fall to fall, through all the possible consequences 
of his first crime. 

Faithful image of man in his state of defection, con- 
science yet speaks to him. Sometimes he follows it ; 
but as for Him in whose name it speaks, who has planted 
it in the bosom of man as a perpetual monitor, as a cry 
of recall incessantly repeated, — he hears him not, he 
serves him not, nay more, he abjures him ; and yet he 
cannot be still, because, after all, he has, now and then, 
yielded something to the clamorous importunities of 
conscience ! Ah ! if he had always heard it, always 
followed it, the difference would not have been great, 
for it is not thus that God teaches his rights and our 
duty. Whatever may be the dignity of conscience, a 
dignity it borrows from God, God will not be supplanted 
by it. Far from yielding to it any of his rights, far 
indeed from abdicating his authority in its favor, as 
some appear to suppose, God, who will not permit pre- 
scription to be established in opposition to his claims, 
has sometimes commanded conscience itself to be silent 
before him. It is on the idea of his immediate right to 
obedience that many of the dispensations and decrees 
of the ancient economy rest. Indeed, if you look at that 
history as a whole, you see that while God, in general, 
respects his own work, by recognizing and even sanc- 
tioning the moral law, which he has written, from the 
beginning, in the human heart, you perceive also, that, 
as he occasionally intervenes by his power, in the 

14* 



322 vinet's miscellanies. 

working of miracles, without changing in any respect 
the combination of forces of which he has composed the 
universe, so likewise, in the sphere of morals, he imposes 
a momentary silence on the sensibilities of our nature, 
and even on our conscience, by commanding what 
these would not even have permitted. While Abraham 
is commended for having led his son to the funeral pile, 
in spite of the murmurs of the paternal heart, and Saul 
is punished for having obeyed an emotion of pity, and not 
committing what, on another occasion, would have been 
called an abuse of victory, do we not recognize in these 
two terrible facts a striking symbol of the truth which I 
advocate, namely, that God is above conscience, that it 
is to him our obedience ought to be addressed, and 
that his divine jealousy cannot be satisfied at a less 
price ? # 

* The procedure of Grod is ever in harmony with conscience and law. 
So far as these are perfect they are but an expression of the divine 
character and will. He may seem to suspend their action, as in the case 
of Abraham and of Saul, but the result shows that, all the time, he was 
acting in harmony with their fundamental principles. But as the law 
resolves itself into the will of God, and he has the sovereign disposal of 
life and death, he has a right to take the life of his creatures, or command 
it to be taken whenever he pleases. Still, he will always act in harmony 
with law, that is to say, with his own nature. " He cannot deny him- 
self." " Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right V But he must 
be judged by his own standard ; he must be permitted to interpret his 
own doings. He has, therefore, only appeared, in special exigences 
and for purposes at once good and wise, to suspend the action of 
natural and moral laws ; but he has never annulled them, never 
violated them. All has been order in nature ; all has been righteous- 
ness in morals. If at any time, his hand has parted the clouds, or laid 
itself upon the conscience of man, it has been done to show that he is 
infinite and supreme ; that he is above all law and conscience ; or rather 
that he is one with a perfect law and a perfect conscience, and can use 
them, as he pleases, to promote the sublime purposes of his providence 



MAN DEPRIVED OF ALL GLORY BEFORE GOD. 323 

Let us confirm these principles by an important con- 
sideration. It is, that obedience to God, I mean to God 
immediately, is alone capable of producing virtue. If 
recalling all that we have conceded, in a preceding dis- 
course, some should find in this assertion a contradiction, 
as well as a paradox, they will give some attention to 
what remains for us to say. 

Is virtue a word, or a thing, a fiction, or a reality ? 
If it is a thing, a distinct reality, it must be one in its 
principle, one in its origin. If it has several principles, 
it is several things at once ; it is an artificial assemblage 
of several phenomena, on which has been imposed a 
collective name, and the real nature of which remains 
by itself inexplicable. It must necessarily be admitted, 
that beyond filial piety, justice, benevolence, veracity, 
chastity, there is one thing which is none of these in 
particular, and which embraces them all at once; a 
principle, according to which we are not only respect- 
ful sons, or just, benevolent, sincere, and chaste men ; 
but all this at once, all that we ought to be ; a general 
power which must conform our soul to moral order in 
all its extent, and cause us to love it in all its applica- 
tions ; which, in a word, creates in us, not virtues but 
virtue. Does this word virtue, in its general or abstract 
sense, signify anything ? Is it a central fountain, of 
which particular virtues are the streams, a trunk, of 
which particular virtues are the branches? If you 
deny this, you are on the way to materialism ; for it 
alone can solve your theory. If, on the contrary, you 
affirm it, point out to us this trunk, this source. The 

and grace. Hence, to pretend to follow the dictates of conscience, or 
obey the law, independent of the will and authority of the Lawgiver, is 
truly " a profound absurdity." — T. 



324 vixet's miscellanies. 

discovery of this original principle has been for a long 
time the task and the despair of moral philosophy. 
Will you seek for it in the conscience ? From the 
conscience, in its actual state, you may derive some 
particular virtues, but their course, followed back, will 
not enable you to reach the primitive stratum, the 
original treasury, whence these waters flow. What is 
there, in the conscience of man. more general than that 
which we have already cited, " As ye would that others 
should do to you. do ye even so to them ?'"' But how 
far is this from embracing the whole extent of moral 
being ! How should such an axiom contain the obliga- 
tion to purify the heart ? How could you conclude 
from it the duty of rendering to God the homage which 
is his due ? Vast as it is. it does not embrace the half 
of our duties. And in practice, what deficiencies, what 
inconsistencies, would it not permit to remain ! What, 
then, is human morality, but a disconnected and frag- 
mentary thing, even in the man who is most distin- 
guished for his character ! In vain do you search there 
for the common principle of all morality. In a word, 
he derives from his conscience only some virtues; he 
cannot derive from it virtue. 

Hence it is, that virtue ought not to be sought after, 
anywhere below God, who is its supreme and only 
source. In fact, the love of God is virtue. The power 
which produces in man simultaneously, as from a single 
fountain, all the virtues, dwells only in this sentiment. 
Thus it is, that in the production of this affection in the 
human bosom, the Scriptures make regeneration to con- 
sist. It does not teach us to be virtuous by successive 
additions, by placing one virtue, so to speak, side by 
side with another. It unites us to God by faith ; and 



MAN DEPRIVED OF ALL GLORY BEFORE GOD. 325 

this faith which produces love, develops simultaneously 
in the renewed soul all those qualities and habits, the 
combination of which forms virtue. And it is because 
he plants that one germ in the very centre of the soul, 
and not at different points on its surface, that he attaches 
a sovereign importance to internal dispositions. The 
Bible alone has said, with a perfect knowledge of its 
cause, " From the heart proceed the springs of life." 
Social virtues, followed as an end, by the ordinary 
moralist, are in the eyes of the Christian moralist only 
the development of internal virtue, the sign and mani- 
festation of its presence in the soul. Human morality, 
in its most perfect state, is only an ingenious mosaic, 
the least concussion of which, makes it a heap of varie- 
gated rubbish; Christian morality is the mighty pyra- 
mid, every part of which finds the same support in its 
immense base, immovable as the ground upon which it 
stands.* 

* The materialists derive the idea of virtue from order, fitness, har- 
mony, utility ; and since the maxim of their philosophy is, nihil est in 
intelleciu, quod nonfuit prius in sensu, there is nothing in the intellect, 
which was not first in the senses ; virtue, according to them, is a thing 
altogether outward and artificial, a matter of mere expediency, or of 
taste. The Spiritualists, on the other hand, maintain that it is innate and 
universal. Some of them would perhaps say, that it is reason in its 
highest estate, or that it is God in the soul. This latter view, though an 
approach to the truth, is yet vague and unsatisfactory. Indeed, every 
one acquainted with the history of metaphysical inquiries, knows that 
no subject has more completely bewildered and baffled the profoundest 
thinkers. But even if the nature of virtue were perfectly understood, 
the great question would yet remain, How is it to be produced in the 
human heart ? Our author says that the love of God is its basis, or 
source ; and he is unquestionably right. For this affection, the strongest 
and purest in man, placed on an infinite object, is alone fitted to control 
the whole life. It then becomes universal, resistless, and inexhaustible. 
From its very nature, it renders virtue precious for its own sake, and 



326 vinet's miscellanies. 

With whatever pretensions man may approach his 
divine Judge, he cannot present himself with virtue ; he 
has it not, for he has not the love of God. What glory, 
then, could he find before God ? Acknowledge that all 
occasion of glorifying himself is excluded ; excluded for 
the man whom the world despises : excluded for him 
whom it esteems. " There is no difference," says the 
apostle, "for all have sinned." Up to this point, the 
possibility of a difference may be conceived ; but he 
adds, " and are deprived of all glory before God." Here 
differences disappear ; for this sin, which is sin properly 
speaking, is the same in all. In this point of view, the 
most generous man has a hard heart, the most just is 
unrighteous, the most honorable unfaithful, the most 
loyal rebellious, the most pure adulterous ; for every- 
thing he has spared his fellow-men, he has done to God. # 

Do not suppose we are ignorant of all the murmurs, 
which feeling our natural prejudice may raise against 
this declaration. We might confine ourselves to reply- 
ing that it remains true notwithstanding, and with an 

dearer than all other interests. By enthroning God in the soul, it makes 
truth and holiness omnipotent and immortal. — T. 

* This, an objector might say, is to confound all moral distinctions. 
But if the author's premises are true, his conclusions are inevitable. If 
man is destitute of love to God, the fundamental principle of virtue, he 
is destitute of all true morality. His heart is corrupt, and his outward 
and temporary virtues are radically defective. They may be useful in 
society, but they do not unite him to God, nor fit him for immortality. 
He is condemned by the state of his heart, with which the government 
of God is chiefly occupied, and must therefore be ranked with the un- 
grateful and disobedient. He needs, as well as they, to be forgiven and 
renewed. If saved at all, he must be saved by grace, as much as the 
Thief on the cross, Mary Magdalene, or Saul of Tarsus. " God hath 
concluded them all in unbelief (rebellion) that he might have mercy 
upon all." — T. 



MAN DEPRIVED OF ALL GLORY BEFORE GOD. 327 

evidence stronger than all prejudices. But the con- 
sideration of an interesting fact will double, if it be 
necessary, the evidence already so great. 

It would be natural to presume, that the more virtu- 
ous a man was, the less disposed we should find him to 
subscribe to the doctrine of our text, or at least to per- 
mit himself to be placed, in this respect, on the same 
level with a man decidedly vicious. I do not deny, that 
we might easily find, among honorable people, some 
specimens of this natural pharisaism. But what we 
often meet with among the noblest souls, and much 
more frequently among them than others, is a disposi- 
tion to complain of themselves, and voluntarily to place 
themselves below those persons who, in the general opin- 
ion, are greatly their inferiors. May it not be that 
these noble spirits, to whom their very superiority may 
be the commencement of a revelation, perceive dimly, 
that in the midst of their amiable virtues, virtue itself is 
wanting ? We go further : let these souls come in con- 
tact with Christianity. To whom, according to com- 
mon notions, is it less necessary than to them ? Have 
they not already, by virtue of their character, the greater 
part of what it can give them ? Alas ! many imagine 
it to be really so ! But many more, and that is suffi- 
cient for our purpose, judge very differently. In the 
midst of their virtues, so highly lauded, a want, not of 
perfection only, but of forgiveness, and of grace, takes 
powerful possession of their minds ; they confess frankly 
that they have no subject of glory before God. Speak 
to them of their virtues, they ask if these virtues prevent 
their life from being a continued course of transgres- 
sions of the divine law. Speak to them of the intrinsic 
worth of their virtues, and you will see them smile 



328 vinet's miscellanies. 

mournfully ; for they know the defectiveness of these 
virtues, entirely human, and so far removed from every 
principle of religious obedience. It is not an easy thing 
to refuse the testimony of such men ; it would be con- 
trary to all good usage, to place more confidence in those 
who boast, than in those who accuse themselves. It 
would be to suspect the truth in a case where there is 
the least reason to suspect it, and to deny the wisdom of 
those to whom you have not been able hitherto to refuse it. 
It would be to admit that it is impossible that a careful 
examination of himself and of the divine law may con- 
duct a man of sense to moral views different from those 
of persons who have not made such an examination ; in 
a word, it would furnish evidence of a superficialness 
which would not be pardoned in any other matter. I 
am persuaded, that a phenomenon like the one in ques- 
tion, at the very least, is worthy of the most serious at- 
tention, and that no one ought to set it aside, before he 
has explained it. 

For ourselves, if our opinion were asked, we avow 
that the madness of human pride amazes us. Man 
bends under the burden of his iniquities ; horrors crowd 
his bloody history ; an odor of death exhales from the 
bosom of society ; the life of each man is, from his own 
confession, a tissue of transgressions, and, considered 
with reference to the claims of God, a long and perse- 
vering infidelity. Terrible assertions, none of which he 
can disavow. The Son of God comes to seek him in 
the depths of this appalling degradation. So long as 
that dishonored creature can hear him, he calls to him, 
with the word of grace : he exhorts him to attach him- 
self to him, and promises that, under his guidance, he 
shall be able to stand without fear in the presence of 



MAN DEPRIVED OF ALL GLORY BEFORE GOD. 329 

his Judge. One moment ! — cries the proud criminal, — 
one moment! Who hath said that I have need of 
grace ; and on what ground does he come to offer me 
that humiliating benefit ? And my virtues, have they 
been estimated ? Is it pretended that they need grace ? 
Must I drag, as suppliants, these noble companions of 
my life, to the foot of a tribunal where crime alone 
ought to appear ? If my sins have need of indulgence, 
my virtues claim nothing but justice; and yet it is pre- 
tended to absolve them ! Yes, it is pretended to absolve 
them, unhappy one, whom pride deceives ! But what 
difference will it make ? With them, or without them, 
you are condemned ; midnight is about to strike ; the 
bridegroom is at the door ! Is your lamp burning ? Is 
your soul united to God ? Are you his by the disposi- 
tions of your heart ? Can you be happy in the society 
of saints, of Christ, and of God himself? This, this is 
the real question, the vital question ; and in this solemn 
hour, when your terrestrial dwelling is about to fall 
upon your head, when a single moment only is given 
you to escape, you lose it, by picking up some useless 
ruins, with which you cannot live, and by which, on the 
contrary, you will perish. 

Sinners virtuous, sinners vicious! hear once more 
the word of the apostle, " There is no difference, for all 
have sinned ; both the one and the other are deprived 
of all glory before God." 

But to sinners of every kind, to us all, to the whole 
world, the man of God cries in the Scriptures, " God 
hath concluded all in rebellion, that he may have mercy 
upon all." With him there is no respect of persons, no 
respect of sins ; he stops not at some shades of differ- 
ence ; he does not apply to us our own vain measures ; 



330 vinet's miscellanies. 

for the original crime is equal in all ; and since he has 
included all in rebellion, he includes all in mercy. La- 
borers of the first, of the second, of the eleventh hour ! nay 
more, ye who were not laborers at all, and who, having 
arrived at the fatal hour of midnight, have nothing to 
offer your Master but confusion and tears, there is room 
for you all in his arms. But you must throw yourselves 
there ; you must seek no other aid ; you must not ex- 
pose yourselves to the malediction of the prophet, 
"Cursed be they who go down to Egypt for help!" 
That is, cursed be they who, refusing to be saved by 
pure grace, take refuge in the recollection of their good 
works, their good will, their good intentions, or in a 
false pretext, a feebleness which they could not vanquish, 
or in the impious idea that God will pardon them at the 
expense of his justice ! The amnesty is doubtless for 
all, for all equally ; but it must be accepted just as it is 
offered ; not as a right, but as a gift ; not as an abandon- 
ment of the principles of the divine government, but as 
the price of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, as a return for 
the ransom he has paid and the pledge he has offered. 
Such are the feelings with which we must come before 
that offended Master, w T ho alone has a right to regulate 
and appoint the terms of the treaty which he will con- 
clude with us. It would be to sanction and confirm 
the first rebellion by a second, to dispute about the 
terms of the treaty, to propose modifications of it, to 
cavil about the clauses, say rather, not to accept it, with 
all the eagerness of gratitude, and all the fervor of ]ove. 
Weigh all these things, my dear brethren, and let those 
who feel internally that they are not reconciled to God, 
ask themselves without delay : " Why do we hesitate to 
conclude with divine justice ? Shall we persist, with- 



MAN DEPRIVED OP ALL GLORY BEFORE GOD. 331 

out a shadow of hope, in making common cause with 
rebels ? Do we wish that death should surprise us in- 
cluded in revolt ? Let the world insult our feebleness ; 
there is no cowardice in capitulating with God. He is 
mad who would sell, to a vain renown for courage, the 
hopes of eternity ! Unhappy he who can spend a whole 
life without loving and serving God ! We are here, 
then, O Lord ; take us to thyself, take us wholly : we 
would not live to ourselves, we would live only to Him 
who hath loved us first, loved us with an eternal love ! 



THE FOUNDATION OF CHRISTIAN MORALITY. 

" The love of Christ constraineth us."— 2 Cor. v. 14. 



A short time since, one of those fugitive publications 
which are intended to offer daily aliment to the public 
curiosity, called the attention of its readers to a new- 
work, which ought, if we might believe the critic, to 
alarm all the friends of pure morality. That dangerous 
work develops an idea which shows how the doctrine, 
and perhaps the intention of the author, is corrupted, 
namely, that all the efforts of man cannot secure his 
salvation, and that he can do nothing to merit it. You 
will ask me what that book so severely criticized is. I 
know not, for it is not even named ; but it might be the 
New Testament. For the New Testament also de- 
clares that man is not saved by his works ; that the 
gift of salvation is entirely gratuitous ; and that it is 
neither of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but 
God that showeth mercy. And since the gospel neither 
supposes nor admits of any other means of salvation, it 
clearly follows that no other means which we may at- 
tempt would conduct us to that result, not even the 
greatest efforts we could make to fulfil the will of God. 
Such is the doctrine in all its nakedness, I was going to 
say, in all its crudeness. What, then, must we do ? As 
to the men who call themselves Christians, and yet cen- 



THE FOUNDATION OF CHRISTIAN MORALITY. 333 

sure these doctrines, it would, perhaps, be sufficient to 
reduce them to silence, by showing them that the doc- 
trines they revile are the very doctrines of the gospel, 
and that the church, for about eighteen centuries, has 
professed and proclaimed them as fundamental truths. 
But as these inconsiderate critics exhibit, besides a great 
ignorance of the contents of the New Testament, a 
striking want of reflection and of true philosophy, it 
may be proper to examine the maxim in question, as a 
simple idea, as a pure theory, in the light of reason 
alone. This is what we propose to undertake ; and we 
hope that the result of this investigation will show that 
this doctrine is not only reasonable and moral, but that 
it alone is reasonable, that it alone is truly moral. 

And first of all, let us give a full statement of the 
difficulty which is presented to us. " A doctrine," it is 
said, " which teaches that we cannot merit salvation, 
which denies the sufficiency, and, consequently, the ne- 
cessity of good works, is directly contradictory to the 
idea of morality ; for morality is the science of duty, 
and in the doctrine objected to, there is no place for 
duty. Moreover, this doctrine contradicts the New 
Testament ; for on all its pages it enjoins good works, 
while this doctrine excludes them." Let us meet this 
objection. And to those who urge it upon us, let us, in 
our turn, put some questions. 

If there is a religious morality that is a system of 
duties with reference to our Creator, must we not pos- 
sess some motive to induce us to practise such duties ? 
It is admitted. Can there be any other motive than 
the two following, interest and devotion ?.* No, it is 

* x " By devotion, devouement, the author means the disinterested love of 
virtue, benevolence, as some have called it. — T. 



334 VINET S MISCELLANIES. 

not possible to conceive of a third. Well, then, to these 
two motives correspond two systems, which we proceed 
to examine. 

According to the first of these systems, every man 
comes into the world with perfect faculties, with obli- 
gations corresponding to these, and the expectation of a 
destiny suited to the manner in which he shall have 
used these faculties and fulfilled these obligations. Be- 
tween God and him there exists a tacit contract, a re- 
ciprocal obligation. Man promises obedience, and God 
promises happiness. He that does good shall be recom- 
pensed ; he that does evil shall be punished. This is 
sufficient to make us perform all our duties. 

In this first system, then, interest is the motive pro- 
posed to us ; an interest, doubtless, very elevated, nay, 
the greatest of all, but still an interest. But who does 
not, at the first glance, see how insufficient and defective 
is such motive ? In the first place, this principle intro- 
duces into morality a foreign element, we may say a 
hostile element, since virtue consists" essentially in self- 
sacrifice. This principle does not at first manifest all 
its hostility to the true spirit of morality. But let it 
work, and you will speedily see it subduing everything 
to itself. It will soon teach you that it is the result 
which gives to actions all their value ; that it is the net 
profit or loss which determines their essential character ; 
that good is no longer good in itself ; that it is good 
only as it secures happiness, and that vice is no longer 
vice in itself, but that it is vice only as it exposes to 
calamity. Promises have only to be attached to vice, 
and it will become virtue, threatenings to virtue, and it 
will become vice. Nevertheless, if morality is not a 
vain word, virtue, separated from its hopes, must still 



THE FOUNDATION OF CHRISTIAN MORALITY. 335 

be something ; and vice, separated from its dangers, 
must also be something. This is not all ; for we must 
not forget that we are treating of religious morality ; of 
duties which have God for their object ; and that the 
first of all these duties, the only duty, properly speaking, 
is love. The law is not fulfilled except by love. But 
interest, carried to its utmost perfection, selfishness the 
most refined, can never rise to love. Under its influ- 
ence a man may estimate the value of actions ; he may 
make calculations with reference to the external life ; 
nay more, he may give all his goods to feed the poor, and 
his body to be burned ; but he can no more cause him- 
self, by self-interest, to love, than he can from the col- 
lision of two pieces of ice produce the slightest spark of 
fire. 

Disgusted with this wholly selfish morality, other 
minds have dreamed of a different system. They have 
absolutely excluded interest, and professed to cultivate 
virtue for its own sake. " Is not virtue," say they, 
" independent of the advantages it procures, worthy to 
receive our homage, and occupy our thoughts ? Is it 
necessary for God, who is truth, beauty, goodness su- 
preme, to encourage us by promises, to frighten us by 
threatenings, in order to secure our obedience ? In 
serving him, we ought to blush to yield to other im- 
pulses, than those which result from his perfections 
themselves ? 

Well, who of us will venture to say that these are not 
right ? Who will not heartily subscribe to this elevated 
system*? But, on the other hand, who will realize it ? 
This system is beautiful, it is lofty, it is true. It has 
only one defect, — it is impracticable. A truce to rea- 
sonings ; let us speak only of facts. Where are those 



336 vinet's miscellanies. 

who serve God from pure love ? Nay, where are those 
who love God at all ? Let us not seek to deceive our- 
selves. Those fugitive emotions, which the thought of 
the Creator, or the contemplation of his marvellous 
works, causes us to feel, those superficial impressions, 
otherwise foreign to so many hearts, are by no means 
love. If we love God only when we find our happiness 
in subordinating to him our thoughts, affections, wishes, 
nay more, our whole life ; if we love God only when 
we lose our will in his ; if we love God only when 
offending him appears to us the greatest, the only ca- 
lamity on earth, and pleasing him the greatest, the only 
felicity ; if we love God only when our heart places 
between Him and creatures the same distance he places 
himself, — answer, ye who hear me, who is it that loves 
God ? True, the worldling quite often exclaims, I cer- 
tainly love God ; nay, who does not love him ? But 
nothing marks with greater clearness, the estrangement 
of our heart, than the audacity of this pretension. He 
who begins to love God, is the first to be alarmed at his 
indifference to God. We love God ! — ah ! let us not 
rashly say so. When we shall cherish for him the 
tenth, the hundredth part, of the affection which we 
cherish for a parent, a friend, or an earthly benefactor, 
it will be time, perhaps, to say that we love him. Till 
then let us be silent, and prostrate in the dust. 

But if we do not love him, what becomes of that dis- 
interested morality which we were right to prefer ? 
What becomes of that refined system of which we were 
so proud ? 

It is true, that in the world, there are men who have 
set out to serve God. They have acknowledged that 
he had a right to be served ; they have felt internally, 



THE FOUNDATION OF CHRISTIAN MORALITY. 337 

the obligation to devote to him their life. But in what 
has that attempt terminated, except in proving that they 
did not really love God ? The worldling, the frivolous 
man, might tell you, with confidence, that he loves God ; 
but go and ask troubled and burdened spirits, who labo- 
riously and painfully drag the long chain of the precepts 
of the law, go and ask them if they have that love in 
their hearts. Ah ! it is not love of which they will 
speak, but of fear, that is to say, of interest still. They 
will tell you of the majesty of the divine law, of its in- 
violability, of its threatenings. They will tell you that 
their sins are a burden greater than they can bear. 
They will tell you that instead of the Father they were 
seeking, they have found only a master and a judge ; 
that his wrath has concealed from them his goodness ; 
that fear has left no place for love, and that before lov- 
ing they must hope. 

Mark it well ; before they love, they must hope. And 
this is the method of the gospel. It remains for us to 
develop it. 

You have seen that interest is not worthy to serve as 
a motive power to our moral conduct. You have seen, 
on the other hand, that an obedience based only upon 
love, has no place in the heart of the natural man. 
Here, then, we experience a double embarrassment ; we 
must discard interest, and produce love ; but how dis- 
card interest, how produce love ? The gospel engages 
to answer these two questions. 

Do this and live, the majority of moralists say to us ; 
so also do the Scriptures of the Old Testament. That 
is to say, if we regard the spirituality, the perfection of 
the law, do what is impossible, and live ; do what is im- 
possible, or perish. 

15 



338 vinet's miscellanies. 

It was necessary that such a morality should be taught 
in the world ; it was necessary, also, that God should 
proclaim it in the old dispensation ; it is still necessary 
that it should be preached in our days, among those 
who resist the gospel ; because the blessing must be es- 
timated by the want, the remedy by the evil. Those 
who reject Jesus Christ must learn how far they are 
from fulfilling the conditions of their existence, and how 
much they need that the exigency thus created should 
be met by Him who can meet all exigencies, supply all 
deficiencies, in a word, by Him who only can create ; 
for the thing to be accomplished is nothing less than a 
creation. In this way law, or morality, " is a school- 
master that leads to Christ."* 

But in the case of him whom the conviction of his 
guilt and impotence has led to Christ, a new order of 
things commences, a new morality springs up. The 
law has said, — " do these things, and live," but the lan- 
guage of the gospel is, — " live, and do these things." In 
the ordinary morality, obedience precedes and produces 
salvation ; in that of the gospel, salvation precedes and 
produces obedience. 

Do you perceive that this simple transposition har- 
monizes everything ? We knew not what to do with 
interest, nor where to find love. Both of them find a 

* The apostle Paul describes Christians as " new creatures," or, as 
the original reads, " a new creation in Christ Jesus." In another pas- 
sage, he speaks of them as passing " from death unto life." So that 
the language of Vinet is fully justified by the word of God. Besides, 
does not reason itself corroborate this view ? If man is not pure and 
virtuous, he is morally dead ; in order then to live, he must be born 
again, that is to say, he must receive a new moral life. He needs two 
things, pardon and sanctification. The bestowment of these by the gos- 
pel is surely nothing less than " a new creation." — T, 



THE FOUNDATION OF CHRISTIAN MORALITY. 339 

place in this system, but in a new order, and in a new- 
relation. Might I venture to say the gospel expels our 
selfishness by satiating it, exhausts it by giving it every- 
thing ? It effaces self as its very first act. At the 
outset, and once for all, the greater part is given to in- 
terest, or rather the whole is given to it, everything 
that can fill the capacity of the heart of men and of 
angels ; eternal life, salvation, in the highest and most 
perfect sense of the word. The gospel begins by de- 
claring that we are saved, not by our works, but inde- 
pendently of them, nay, before our works. It relieves 
us of the intolerable burden, which caused us to bend 
under the obligations and terrors of the law. It gives 
rest and enlargement to the heart. It restores it to lib- 
erty. And of this liberty what use do we make ? It 
is here the beauty of the evangelical system is seen. 
Joyful over his dissipated fears, happy on account of his 
deliverance, and tranquil with reference to his future 
fate, but, above all, admitted to contemplate God in the 
perfect manifestation of his love, confiding in God, whose 
goodness knows no change ; in a word, conquered by 
gratitude, he is seized with a desire to do everything 
for Him who hath first loved him, and given himself for 
him. " He loveth much, because he is forgiven much." 
Will he neglect the law ? On the contrary, it will be- 
come to him more dear and sacred. But he will ob- 
serve it in another spirit, — as the law of love, as the 
law of a Father and a Saviour. He will acknowledge 
that it is perfect, that it is sweeter than honey, that it 
restores the soul. He will delight in it after the inward 
man. He will practise it, doubtless from a sense of ob- 
ligation, but also from taste, from inclination, soon even 
from instinct ; and he will observe it more and more, as 



340 vinet's miscellanies. 

it becomes dearer to his heart by the good fruits which 
it brings forth. It will no longer be necessary to say to 
him, In the name of your eternal interests, in the name 
of the terrors of the judgment, do this and live ; be- 
cause his eternal interests have been provided for, and 
the sentence which condemns him has been nailed to 
the cross. But it will be said to him, " Walk in good 
works, for which ye were created in Christ Jesus. Ye 
are bought with a price, therefore glorify God in your 
bodies, and in your spirits which are his ;" or, as the 
apostle says in another place, " I beseech you, by the 
mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living 
sacrifice unto God, holy and acceptable, which is your 
reasonable service." 

Doubtless, this fulness of confidence, this victorious 
assurance, is not imparted, in the same degree, to all 
Christians ; and if many possess it in the first moment 
of their conversion, others arrive at it only by a slow 
and laborious progress, while others, all their life long, 
rejoice with trembling. But observe two things par- 
ticularly ; in the first place, it is certain that in the view 
of all those to whom it has been given to believe in the 
merciful sacrifice of the Saviour, God is love. They 
know, they feel that they are loved ; they see that the 
designs of God respecting them are salvation and 
peace ; and this conviction which reveals to their mind 
another God than is known to the world, also inspires 
them with other dispositions than those of the world. 
They love that God who has loved them personally and 
tenderly ; and thus it is that love becomes the principle 
of their moral life. Secondly, the gospel, by incessantly 
declaring that their works cannot save them, by impel- 
ling them continually towards the idea of a gratuitous 



THE FOUNDATION OF CHRISTIAN MORALITY. 341 

salvation, forever urges them towards divine love, and 
forces all their thoughts to concentrate on that great 
object, — the compassion of the Saviour. With these 
persuasions, with this constant direction of the mind, 
it is impossible that the life should not become a life ac- 
cording to God. These Christians, then, do not form 
an exception to the position we have laid down. But 
this is not all. 

Sincere faith is, in reality, full of hope. The indi- 
vidual who firmly believes that the blood of the new 
covenant has been shed for him, cannot be persuaded 
that He who has enabled him to believe, hath bestowed 
a gift illusory and vain. He cannot deny to himself the 
faithfulness of God. And if sometimes the ineffaceable 
conviction of his own unworthiness, the consideration 
of that law of the flesh in his members which fights 
against the law of the spirit, the view of so many de- 
plorable infidelities in the bosom even of the church 
may, for a moment, obscure his hope, these very things 
make him recur with redoubled fervor to Him, who, 
finding nothing in us to make us acceptable in his sight, 
has been willing to save us through the faith which he 
has given. Do not imperatively demand from that 
Christian soul the triumphant assurance which the 
Lord has not made the privilege of all believers. He 
has it not, perhaps ; but he loves ; he has renounced all 
merit; he expects nothing from himself, but everything 
from his Father. I ask you, if he has not complied 
with the terms of the gospel? I ask you, when he 
obeys from love, without hope in himself, without mer- 
cenary and sordid views, if that principle of Christian 
morality, the superiority of which we have endeavored 
to establish, is a stranger to him, and if the occasional 



342 vinet's miscellanies. 

shadows which becloud his hope, in any measure de- 
tract from the system we have developed. 

True, the gospel speaks of a recompense, a reward, a 
crown. Here is only one truth ; but it may have two 
aspects. It is quite evident that faith produces love, 
that love produces obedience, and an obedience which 
makes no calculation. But it is equally true that the 
works of such an obedience are good works ; that such 
w r orks lead to happiness as a necessary consequence ; 
that God has not desired, and cannot desire the restora- 
tion of man without the design of rendering him happy ; 
and that, in this view, the gospel has been able, in God's 
name, to speak of a recompense and a crown. Thus, 
then, we find in the same truth, two ideas, not contra- 
dictory, but correlative ; faith given as a grace, and the 
fruits of faith as a recompense ; the believer not labor- 
ing for a recompense, but God treating him as if he 
owed him something; salvation preceding obedience, 
since the cross, the means of salvation, has preceded 
the works of the believer, and in another sense, that is 
to say, in the order of time, obedience preceding salva- 
tion, since the full enjoyment of the blessings promised 
to the believer does not commence till after he has fin- 
ished his work. There is, then, no contradiction, but 
mutual correspondence between the diverse declara- 
tions of the New Testament ; and all the passages 
which it contains respecting the rewards of the faith- 
ful, cannot shake its great, its vital principle, namely, 
that obedience is the fruit of salvation, and that the be- 
liever obeys, not that he may be saved, but because he 
is already saved. Besides, what need have we to con- 
firm all these ideas, when the facts utter a language so 
clear ? Seek among all men who make a profession of 



THE FOUNDATION OF CHRISTIAN MORALITY. 343 

Christianity, those to whom Christianity is real, vital, 
efficacious, those who have received the gospel in 
earnest, and apply it with fidelity in their life, and ask 
them, in view of their good works, what is the principle 
of these works ; and there is not one of them but will 
answer, I obey because I love ; I love because God has 
pardoned me. 

Even if the common morality, that, I mean, which 
rejects the doctrine of the atonement, should succeed in 
producing the same effects, the same works as the evan- 
gelical morality, the latter would no less produce a strik- 
ing character of superiority; for, as a modern writer has 
judiciously remarked, virtue in the one, is but the means; 
in the other, it is the end. In the one, God is served as 
a means of happiness ; in the other, he is adored for 
himself. In the one, we cannot free ourselves from 
mercenary views ; in the other, we obey only from a 
pure and generous impulse, In the one, it is servile 
fear; in the other, filial reverence. "Having such 
promises, dearly beloved, let us perfect holiness in the 
fear of the Lord." In the one, there is self-interest, and 
consequently bondage ; in the other, all is love, that is 
to say, freedom. 

After these reflections, it will be easy for you to 
appreciate the criticism which we referred to at the 
beginning of this discourse. You can judge if that is 
an immoral doctrine, which teaches that all our efforts 
cannot secure our salvation, and that nothing can be 
done to merit it. You know now that this doctrine is 
that of love ; and of love in two senses at once, of a 
merciful love on the part of God, of a grateful love on 
the part of man. It is not a bargain, but a free cove- 
nant between God who has loved us first, and us who 



344 vinet's miscellanies. 

love him on account of his very love. What ! is duty 
less sacred to us because we love him who imposes it ? 
What ! is the law the less acknowledged by us the more 
we acknowledge him who has given it ? What ! do we 
hate sin less, because its expiation has cost the purest 
blood in the universe ? What ! shall we feel ourselves 
under less obligation to obey, because we cannot esti- 
mate all the immensity of the Father's love? Is a 
doctrine, which doubles the weight of all duties, the 
force of all precepts, the pressure of all motives, an im- 
moral doctrine ? Is it not rather, as we said at the 
beginning, the best, the only good morality ? 

That the grace of God may be turned into licentious- 
ness we are not anxious to deny. That such an insult 
to the majesty of God, the majesty of divine charity, 
transcends all other baseness, every one will acknowl- 
edge. On this account it must be admitted that the 
greatest manifestation of the goodness of God has given 
occasion to the greatest manifestation of the wickedness 
of man. If God had found it necessary to prescribe the 
use of no other means than such as it would have been 
impossible for us to abuse, we might not have fallen so 
low, that everything reveals it, or rather we might not 
have fallen at all. The effects we have described we 
have presented as natural, and doubtless they are such, 
but not as certain in themselves ; the will of God and 
the grace of his Spirit alone secure them. It is true, 
then, that many have abused them, and that many will 
abuse them ; but those who abuse them do so to their 
destruction, while those who use them, do so to their 
unspeakable benefit. The latter have reasoned well, 
concluded well; the former have made a deplorable 
mistake ; and in every case what cuts off all difficulty 



THE FOUNDATION OF CHRISTIAN MORALITY. 345 

is, that while a small number only have accepted and 
fully understood grace, natural morality has never saved 
a single person, because it cannot regenerate him ; while 
the dispensation we have explained, is the only one 
which has proved its efficacy to save the soul. That 
which changes the heart, which causes it to be born to 
a new life, which invests all obligations with a sacred 
authority, and transfers a religious character even to the 
slightest duties, which, in fine, elevates morality to the 
region of the absolute and the perfect, is the dispensa- 
tion of the gospel, and that alone. How far, then, 
how infinitely far from truth and justice, are those who 
charge with immorality the doctrine we exhibit. 

That doctrine which has been described to us in the 
nineteenth century, as a shocking paradox, is the same 
as that professed by all true Christians since Jesus 
Christ. It is the morality of St. Paul and of St. John, of 
Fenelon and of Pascal, of Newton and of Oberlin, — it 
is Christian morality. Salvation by faith is spoken of 
in your churches, and you receive that expression. 
Very well ! this morality is nothing else than salvation 
by faith, or the recovery of the soul, by trust in the 
divine compassion ; and how far will not this make the 
doctrine go back into the past? Under the ancient 
covenant, believers among the Jews already lived by 
this faith in the gratuitous mercy of the Lord. Ascend- 
ing from one generation to another, you see them all 
drink of the water of this spiritual rock, which is Christ ; 
you see Moses prefer the reproach of Christ to all the 
treasures of Egypt ; you see this divine promise throw 
its pure and consoling light upon the mournful path of 
our first parents going forth from the shades of Para- 
dise. This is the morality for which, during four 

15* 



346 VINET S MISCELLANIES. 

thousand years, God prepared sick and fallen humanity ; 
the morality, whose majestic foundations, so long pre- 
pared in darkness, the death of Christ has brought forth 
into the light ; the morality of all future time ; in a word, 
the morality of humanity, which can sustain no other. 
O, if there is one among you, whom prejudices, like those 
which have given rise to this discourse, still keep far 
away from the gospel, we conjure him to study the 
system of the gospel, and after having admired its 
beauty, consistency, and harmony, let him ask himself 
the question, if it is possible for man to invent it ? Let 
him ask himself, if there is not here more than a system ; 
if there is not a fact, vast and divine, the greatest in the 
entire history of the universe ? Let the cross become 
to him a reality, Jesus Christ a Saviour, the gospel good 
news, an authentic message from heaven ; and let him 
adopt this morality, alone worthy of God, alone adapted 
to our wants, and alone capable of regenerating our 
souls. 



NECESSITY OF BECOMING CHILDREN. 



Verily I say unto you, except ye be converted, and become as little children, 
shall not enter the kingdom of heaven."— Matt, xviii. 3. 



I have sought, in the preceding discourse, to render 
Christianity acceptable to your reason; I have con- 
stantly attached the chain of my arguments to the im- 
mutable principles of nature. I have appealed from 
yourselves to yourselves. I have thus, as it were, 
erected a tribunal before which the religion of Jesus 
Christ has appeared to be judged. What I have done, 
was, in my judgment, permitted to me. Preaching 
ought always to set out from a point admitted by all, in 
order to arrive at one which is not ; with men convin- 
ced of the truth of Christianity, it sets out from the 
declarations of the gospel itself; with those who are 
not thus convinced, it must set out from a point further 
back, a point which can be nothing else than some one 
of those convictions which are common to all our hear- 
ers, imparted by nature, or acquired by study. We 
have no regret, then, at the course we have followed ; 
but we acknowledge that the attitude in which we have 
been forced to place Christianity, shall we venture to 
say it, of being accused by you, and defended by us, is 
not such as we should have preferred ; and we have 
not been able to conceal from ourselves the danger both 



348 vinet's miscellanies. 

to you and to us, almost inseparable from such a method, 
By continually invoking the testimony of your reason, 
we had to fear inflating that very reason ; and on the 
other hand, of giving to the Christian revelation a false 
air of philosophical system and theory. We may also 
have given some occasion to believe that the work of 
conversion to Christianity, is accomplished entirely by 
human means ; that one becomes a disciple of Jesus 
Christ in no other way, than he becomes a disciple of 
Plato ; that in this marvellous transformation, reason 
and philosophy accomplish the whole ; in a word, that 
the proud thinker could make that long and important 
transition from the world to Christianity, without losing 
anything, or yielding anything on the way. 

It is this impression which we shall now endeavor to 
destroy, if we have permitted it to be formed in you. 
Christianity, which has seen us patiently defending its 
rights before our petty tribunal, must, from this moment, 
assume the accent which becomes it, and dissipate the 
illusions you may have formed touching its position and 
your own. Have you thought, perhaps, that it sought 
nothing but your adherence, and, too well satisfied with 
having gained it, would leave you at rest, as after an 
affair amicably settled between it and you ? Have you 
thought, by declaring its pretensions acceptable, by 
pronouncing, so to speak, its sentence of acquittal, you 
had done all that it required, and that its relations to 
you would continue on the same footing of equality on 
which they commenced ? Assuredly you were greatly 
deceived. It must, by no means, be concluded that you 
are converted, because you have yielded to the hys- 
torical, the moral, or the philosophical evidence, with 
which it is irradiated in every part. That work, to 



NECESSITY OF BECOMING CHILDREN. 349 

take it in its true nature, is not even begun ; all that 
we have said, and all that you have believed, is scarcely a 
preface to it ; you have not yet read a single syllable of 
the book itself. The road to the kingdom of heaven has 
been pointed out to you ; but you have not entered that 
kingdom. Such as you are naturally, you cannot enter 
it, for, says the Master himself to you, " Except ye be 
converted, and become as little children, ye shall not 
enter the kingdom of heaven." 

Remember the reply of Archimedes to the tyrant of 
Sicily, who grew impatient with the slowness of his 
method, or the difficulty of his theorems, " There is no 
royal road to science." With greater reason we may 
say the same to you, respecting our subject. Chris- 
tianity does not offer, does not know any privileged 
road. I acknowledge, that so long as you make in- 
quiry touching the truth of the Christian revelation, the 
nature of these preliminary investigations is such as to 
leave undisturbed the sentiment of your independence 
and your dignity. This part of the route is wide ; it 
has room for all your pretensions. Here you can en- 
large and expatiate at your ease, and occupy it entirely 
with the sumptuous array of your science. But this 
road, however wide, terminates for you, and for every 
one, at a gate so sfrrait and low, that far from being able 
to pass it, with all your magnificence, you cannot even 
enter it, except on condition of lessening yourselves, 
and exchanging, so to speak, the stature of a full-grown 
man, for that of a little child. " Except ye be con- 
verted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter 
the kingdom of heaven." 

Is this the same as saying, that at the decisive mo- 
ment on which depends an entrance into the kingdom 



350 vinet's miscellanies. 

of heaven, man is called upon to abandon his reason, to 
regard as null and void all the knowledge he has ac- 
quired, and that the childhood, which is made a condi- 
tion of his admission, is nothing but ignorance and 
stupidity ? Those who can believe this, forget that the 
New Testament everywhere supposes the contrary, and 
that the Christian religion includes in itself the richest 
source of intellectual development. They forget that 
from the very first, it has rendered popular the loftiest 
ideas ; that the apostles were not afraid to say to men 
already converted, " We speak as unto wise men ;" and 
that in one of the epistles is found this remarkable an- 
tithesis, " Be not children in understanding ; howbeit in 
malice be ye children, but in understanding be men." 
1 Cor. xiv. 20. A man in reason, — a child in heart, — 
such must the Christian be ; such is the disposition with 
which every one must enter the kingdom of heaven. I 
suppose you to have the first ; have you the second ? 

So long as you were only examining, in the pride of 
your reason, the evidences of Christianity, its records 
and its testimonies, everything was allowed to you which 
is allowed to full-grown men ; you were required to be 
nothing else. But when, at the conclusion of these in- 
dependent researches, your conviction has bound you 
to the doctrine of Christ ; when by any means, you 
have acquired assurance that Jesus Christ came into 
the world to save sinners, of which each of you may 
well say, he is chief ; when, to take a particular case, 
that great thinker, that subtle genius, that learned man, 
has ascertained that he has been picked up in the 
highways of the world, as an abandoned child, without 
protection, without clothing or food, without power to 
proceed on his way, or even voice to inquire the road, 



NECESSITY OF BECOMING CHILDREN. 351 

will it become him to affect the airs of a being of im- 
portance ? And will he not be bound to confess him- 
self a child, let himself be treated as such, become such 
in reality ? 

What, then, in the eyes of God, is he whom the 
world honors as a wise man ? What is he but an ig- 
norant one ? What he that is strong among men, but 
weakness itself? What he that is intelligent, but a fool ? 
What he that is rich, but a pauper ? Even if he should 
have discovered new heavens, or founded an empire on 
the earth, what is he in the eyes of God but a madman 
who has forgotten the first of truths ; who is incapable 
of spelling the first syllable of the name with which the 
heavens resound, and which angels adore ; who cannot 
fulfil, cannot even begin to fulfil, the first, the holiest, 
and the simplest of his duties, and who with all his 
knowledge of nature, estranges himself so far even from 
nature, that he adores what he ought to despise, and 
despises what he ought to adore ! 

That which a little child is, with reference to the 
knowledge which such a man possesses, he is himself 
with reference to the knowledge of God. But that 
which a child has, he has not. The child has, for all 
power, the consciousness of his feebleness ; for all sci- 
ence, the consciousness of his ignorance ; for all wisdom, 
the instinct which carries him towards his natural pro- 
tectors. The man of the world has not this wisdom. 
He wishes, unaided, to raise himself from the cradle, 
where he lies in his weakness. He wishes to find the 
road for himself, in a region of which he is ignorant. 
He rejects the hand which is held out to sustain him, 
and ever pre-occupied with his part as a full-grown 
man, he will not recollect that he is only a child. 



352 vinet's miscellanies. 

This disposition, so natural and so common among 
those who are destitute of Christian convictions, is often 
seen perpetuated even among those whose reason has 
been conquered by the gospel. They are ready, in their 
character of full-grown men, to sign the deed which 
acknowledges the gospel, but they cannot persuade 
themselves to become children, that is, to become Chris- 
tians. It is here they encounter the great stone of 
stumbling which their wisdom had not foreseen. It is 
here they stop disconcerted, as if caught in a snare. 
It was not with this prospect that they embraced Chris- 
tianity. They were deceived ; they have been led fur- 
ther than they wished to go ; they will not go back, that is 
henceforth impossible ; but neither will they go forward. 

They must go forward. They must put their heart 
in harmony with their intellect. Christianity is not a 
system out of us, but a life within us. Christianity is a 
renovation of the soul ; it is nothing less. A Christian 
is not a man who has expelled from his mind one theory 
to give place to another. He is a man humbled ; who 
feels that he can live only upon mercy ; who adores, 
who blesses that mercy ; w 7 ho nourishes himself on the 
promises of God as his only hope ; who continually re- 
nounces himself, and devotes his life daily to the Sav- 
iour. He does not live himself, but his Saviour lives in 
him. And the life which he still lives in the flesh, he 
lives by faith on the Son of God, who hath loved him. 

It would be very agreeable, doubtless, and very flat- 
tering to his self-love, to present himself to the world as 
a man who, amongst all systems, had made his choice, 
and is ready to furnish evidence of his good judgment, 
by giving an account of the reasons which have led him 
to embrace Christianity as a system eminently rational. 



NECESSITY OF BECOMING CHILDREN. 353 

But the question at issue is a very different one from 
that of a mere profession. Look at a child. He not 
only does not blush to acknowledge his father, but he 
glories in it. It never occurs to the mind of that young 
creature, that the father whom he respects, is not re- 
spected by all. He places him in his estimation far 
above all other men. He yields to him respect and 
obedience in every place. Even in the one where his 
father is obliged to take a humble attitude, he perceives 
not that his father is not to every one what he is to 
him ; or did he perceive it, he would be astonished and 
afflicted, and say so in sufficiently decisive tones. Ask 
from him who is yet only a philosophical Christian, 
these testimonies, these acknowledgments, this open and 
honest profession. Require him to declare, without 
embarrassment and circumlocution, and in all places 
equally, his exclusive trust in the blood of the new cov- 
enant. Let him place himself at the foot of the cross, 
humble, poor, and wretched. Let him, full of love for 
his father, seized with admiration of that glorious good- 
ness, feeling that nothing is great, nothing beautiful by 
the side of that divine work, give free expression to the 
emotions of his heart, and speak of the news of salva- 
tion as news always fresh, always interesting, news to 
which the attention ought to be devoted by choice, in 
the midst of all other news. Ask for all this, and you 
will ask in vain. He has not believed in order that he 
might come to such an issue. He did not anticipate 
this. In truth, you astonish him greatly. 

A little child has, with reference to the relations of 
society, views more philosophical than any philosopher. 
To him men are men. Custom does not, in his view, 
communicate to them any new quality. He loves 



354 vinet's miscellanies. 

them if they are good ; he loves them if they love his 
father. In this respect, the Christian is a child. He 
permits the relations of society to exist ; he accepts 
social distinctions for temporal use ; and frequently 
conforms to them, from Christian prudence ; but his 
heart, internally, levels all these distinctions. Christian 
love is the great leveller. He is not afraid to treat all 
men as brethren ; for he sees in them the children of his 
father ; and if there be any to whom his heart yields a 
preference, they are those who love his father. The 
differences of rank not only do not arrest his love, but 
barriers more difficult to overleap, those which are 
raised by difference of culture, intelligence and charac- 
ter, he scales with equal ease. He has always some- 
thing to say to the simple, something to learn from the 
ignorant, some sympathy with characters the most di- 
verse from his own. Neither weariness nor disgust 
accompanies him into society thus diversified. One 
great common interest brings all minds into harmony. 
Here all feel themselves equally learned and ignorant, 
equally foolish and wise. The differences which sub- 
sist in another sphere are not remarked. They are, 
with reference to the final aim of life, of but very little 
importance. Wherever the Christian meets a Chris- 
tian, he finds an equal. On the contrary, nothing is 
more foreign to the Christian in theory. In order to 
form a common bond between him and the Christian, 
something more than Christianity is needed. There 
must be, if not equality of rank, at least equality of cul- 
ture. He has nothing to say to the unlettered Chris- 
tian ; he feels ill at ease in his company ; he dreads it. 
He must have similitude of views ; a difference dis- 
turbs him. He cannot raise himself above the impres- 



NECESSITY OF BECOMING CHILDREN. 355 

sion which produces an opinion so little rational. He 
cannot abstract himself from forms, to attach himself 
to principles, that is, to Christianity itself. He seeks 
equals and fellows, rather than brethren. 

A little child can do nothing of himself; but he ex- 
pects everything from his father. He knows that he is 
loved by him, and that he will refuse him nothing that 
is necessary. He prays. The life of a little child is a 
prayer. What reason has man to think and to act in 
the same way ? But to pray, says the wise man, to 
pray ! That is not natural to my heart. Everything, 
indeed, which can be said of prayer, I know and hold 
for truth. But in spite of that, I do not feel inclined to 
it. It appears as if it were something foreign to me, an 
affair of another. I seem to myself so singular in prayer, 
as if I were doing something learnt or copied. Had I 
thought of all this, in becoming a Christian ? 

A little child believes what his father tell him. It is 
his father ! Does he not know all that a child needs to 
know ; and would he deceive him ? This amiable in- 
stinct is the instinct of a Christian. He knows what 
his father has spoken ; that is enough for him. He will 
not submit to the control of human wisdom the authen- 
tic communications of divine wisdom. After having 
believed that the gospel is from God, he will believe 
what the gospel says. The Christian in theory is fol- 
lowed by the pride of reason into the enclosure at the 
gates of which it ought to have stopped. He still wishes 
to judge, to choose, to adapt to his use, to prescribe to 
God what God ought to say, to reform the axioms of re- 
vealed truth, to re- make the Bible, after having ac- 
cepted it. Do you speak to him of submission ? Do 
you remind him that he has promised it, and that, at 



356 vinet's miscellanies. 

least, he ought to leave those mysteries undisturbed, 
whose inviolability he had previously acknowledged ? 
His reason, accustomed to enter everywhere, is sur- 
prised that any door should be shut upon it ; he had 
never estimated the extent of his engagements. He 
begins to be vexed ; and feeling at once the impossi- 
bility of receding or advancing, impelled by pride, re- 
tained by fear, he remains immovable and inactive, on 
the precise limit which separates Christianity from the 
world. 

The passage from knowledge to possession, from be- 
lief to life, our Lord has strikingly represented by the 
figure, so singular at first sight, of a return from mature 
age to childhood. While in the world, the preceptor 
says to the child, Come, act like a man, Jesus Christ, 
our divine Teacher, says to the man, Act like a child. 
Be in heart, with relation to God and your fellow-men, 
what a little child is with reference to his father, and all 
the persons by whom he is surrounded. The infancy 
of the heart is the trait which distinguishes the Chris- 
tian in fact, from the Christian in theory. But that 
infancy of heart, what is it but humility ? What dis- 
tinguishes a child from a man, if it is not a sort of natu- 
ral humility? It is humility, then, which draws the 
line of demarkation between the Christian who believes, 
and the Christian who lives. It is humility, then, which 
is wanting to the former, and which it remains for him 
to acquire, in order to enter the kingdom of heaven. 

Let us here explain ourselves thoroughly, and not 
give you occasion to suppose that one virtue is more 
than another the condition of salvation. Jesus Christ 
has only desired us to understand, that his religion is of 
such a nature, that if any one will not consent to hum- 



NECESSITY OF BECOMING CHILDREN. 357 

ble himself, he cannot be his disciple. He might equally 
have said that no one can be such, unless he love. He 
has said so, and his disciples have repeated it. But hu- 
mility itself is a proof that one loves ; he who loves has 
no difficulty in humbling himself; he who does not 
humble himself, does not love. He who can see the 
Son of God descend to the earth, partake of our suf- 
ferings, degrade himself to the rank of a malefactor, 
and drink opprobrium like water, that he, a sinner, may 
enjoy eternal life in the bosom of the Father ; he who 
sees this, and believes it, and still imagines that the dis- 
ciple is more than his Master, and the servant more 
than his Lord ; he who cannot persuade himself to drink 
one drop of the cup which Jesus has drained ; he who 
cannot lay at the foot of the cross his frivolous preten- 
sions, his independence of spirit, his confidence in him- 
self, his petty glory, his vanity ; he who pretends to rest 
upon a throne in the presence of Jesus bound to the 
stake of infamy, unquestionably does not love. And, 
on the other hand, he who is not affected by such devo- 
tion, who can believe in Christ, without loving him, 
whose heart does not permit itself to be caught in the 
snare of mercy, he doubtless is not humbled. Princi- 
ples which take each other's places by turns, love and 
humility, cannot exist separately in the soul. Go down 
into its depths, and you will find them united there, 
blended in a single sentiment, whose different qualities 
are developed together, by the same emotion, and the 
same virtue. 

But if reason tells us that the gospel is of such a na- 
ture that we cannot receive it in deed and in truth, 
without becoming children, reason can do nothing more. 
It abandons us in this affair, as in others, at the point 



358 vinet's miscellanies. 

where the true difficulty begins. Reason is not the ef- 
ficient cause of any of the emotions which spring up 
within us. All that it can do is to conduct us into the 
presence of facts ; then it retires, and leaves the facts 
to affect and modify us. It is thus that it places us in 
the presence of the fact of redemption, a fact which in- 
cludes this singularity, that however well fitted it may 
appear by its nature to touch our hearts, it yet meets 
there the most formidable obstacles. In theory, we say 
to ourselves, that in this fact everything is so combined 
as to move the heart ; in practice, it would appear as if 
it were only fitted to revolt it. Thus the gospel does 
not ascribe to our natural faculties the power to believe 
in it, and appropriate it to ourselves. " No one can be- 
lieve," it says to us, " that Jesus is the Son of God, but 
by the Holy Spirit;" which doubtless means, that no 
one can, without the aid of the Holy Spirit, endue him- 
self with the dispositions of a true disciple of Jesus 
Christ. No one, to speak after the manner of our 
text, can enter the kingdom of heaven, except he be 
converted, and become a little child. 

Hence this transformation into infancy does not even 
belong to you. All that you can find in yourselves is 
the conviction that, proud and independent by nature, 
you must ask God to break down that haughtiness, to 
reduce you to the measure of little children, to give you 
their hearts. And it is not you, learned men, and men 
of genius alone, who need to ask this. Your pride does 
not surpass that of other men, as your talents surpass 
theirs. They too, in their mediocrity, are haughty and 
proud, for they are men ; humble and modest, perhaps, 
with relation to men, haughty and proud with reference 
to God. Their reason makes no less pretensions than 



NECESSITY OF BECOMING CHILDREN. 359 

yours ; their dignity is not less exacting ; it costs them as 
much to abase themselves, as if, like you, they had their 
heads in the clouds. To be children, little children, to 
walk wherever they are led, unable to quit the hand 
which guides them, to depend on the divine mercy for 
the supply of their daily wants, to associate with the 
humble, to be seen in the company of little ones, to put 
themselves on equality with the poor in spirit, — what 
abasement, what disgrace ! Happy, however, they who 
have accepted that disgrace, and covered themselves 
with it ! The shame of earth is the glory of heaven. 
If it yet shocks you, if you are not yet pleased to become 
the children of God, know that, notwithstanding your 
professions, you are not yet in the kingdom of heaven ; 
you are on the threshold of a door open to your inspec- 
tion, but forbidden to your entrance. You must beseech 
God to break to pieces your pride, by giving you a lively 
consciousness of your sinful state, a profound view of 
your misery, an implacable hatred of yourselves, such 
as sin has made you, and a solemn conviction of your 
danger. Tell him to cast you down, to put you so low 
in your own esteem, that you may feel yourselves but 
too happy to be born again simple children under the 
paternal hand. Then, not only will the religious con- 
victions you have acquired profit you, but they will no 
longer be a burden, a care, an importunate thought, too 
oppressive, wherever you may drag it. They will con- 
stitute the foundation of your peace, the source of your 
happiness, a life in your life, a life in your death, your 
hope in time, your glory in eternity. 



THE CLAIMS OF HEAVEN AND EARTH ADJUSTED. 

" Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth." — Col. iii. 2. 



This precept, and a multitude of analogous declara- 
tions spread through the Scriptures, are a subject of 
offence to many readers. They see in them the provi- 
dence of God contradicted by his word. It is God 
himself that has placed us on the earth, and it is he who 
wills that all our thoughts should be in heaven. It is 
God who has placed us, by our bodies, our wants, and 
our faculties, in a close and necessary relation with the 
world ; yet it is he who wishes to bind our hearts to 
eternity, by indestructible ties. It is he who admits of 
no division, no compromise, and proposes to us the 
choice between heaven and earth, as a choice between 
life and death. 

Ought it to surprise us, say superficial readers of the 
New Testament, that, pressed between two opposing 
necessities, we should decide, after some uncertainty, 
either to throw our whole life into the future, or lose it 
entirely in the present ? If some minds, struck with the 
instability of the world, hasten to flee from under the 
roof of a ruinous edifice, retire into the profound soli- 
tude of their own thoughts, concentrate themselves upon 
a single idea, that of eternity, and renounce the activity 



CLAIMS OF HEAVEN AND EARTH ADJUSTED. 361 

of social life, in order to consecrate themselves entirely 
to the care of their salvation ; while others, abandoned 
to the influence of external impressions, spirits fickle, 
active, curious, governed by the instinct of sociability, 
and the charm of life, engage, body and soul, in the 
bustle of human affairs, and do not permit a single 
thought to escape towards the invisible world and the 
things of eternity, we once more inquire, ought we to 
be astonished at it ? 

Alas, no, it is not surprising. We need not be as- 
tonished to see the false reason of man corrupt and 
bend to its liking the simple doctrines of the gospel. 
But if we embrace the whole of its teachings, we shall 
really find nothing in the gospel which tends, even in 
the slightest degree, to the separation or divorce of our 
two lives, to the mutilation of our double nature. We 
are not taught there, that God, in giving us the gospel, 
intended violently to rend our nature, and to place in 
competition two necessities, equally imperative. On 
the contrary, w r e are persuaded, while reading that 
divine book, that God has been pleased to establish in 
our life a perfect and unalterable unity, to form of the 
two principles of which man is composed, a single being; 
not to destroy one activity for the benefit of the other, 
but to give to both one aim, and to the whole life a 
single significance ; not to kill, but to regenerate man. 

The anchorite of ancient times, the partially enlight- 
ened believer, who, in our day, would bring back the 
life of the anchorite, both misapprehend the design of 
God. If Christian perfection had required their retire- 
ment from this world, God would have made for them 
a separate world, where the wants of the body, the 
necessities of physical existence, and the engagements 

16 



362 vinet's miscellanies. 

of society would never have disturbed the current of 
their serene contemplations. God has not made such a 
world. By invincible ties has he bound them to the 
world of sense, and the relations of society. He has 
compelled them to labor for their fellow-creatures, and 
their fellow-creatures for them. And no less has he 
demanded that they should labor for their salvation. 

Indeed, our situation would be favorable, and our 
task easy, if it were only necessary to leave society, in 
order to find God ; if God did not permit us to breathe 
the dust of the arena, or to hear the noise of combat ; 
if we could triumph without having fought ; if religion 
consisted not in overcoming temptations, but in encoun- 
tering none ; if it were permitted us, in order to become 
saints, to cease to be men ; and if we could cast far away 
from us the noble burden of humanity, as a great orator, 
in ancient times, expressed himself* 

* There was a celebrated people of antiquity, (the Spartans,) a part 
of whom had succeeded in subjugating the other, and causing them to 
accept the severest laws. The conquered and the conquerors continued 
to occupy the same soil, and to form, as it were, a single people. But 
the difference of their respective positions showed itself in the' difference 
of their employments. The conquerors aimed to arrive, as a people, at 
an ideal and unexampled perfection. Consequently military exercise, 
the strictest order, privations the most painful, became the foundation 
of then- life. None of the members of this association were permitted 
to go beyond the bounds of the republic, nor was a stranger allowed to 
penetrate within that sacred territory. It might be called a military 
monastery, subjected to the strictest rules. But as it was necessary, 
after all, in the midst of this sublime discipline, to live, the vanquished 
race were charged with providing for this. On them was imposed the 
vulgar, but indispensable task of cultivating the earth, of exercising 
trades, in a word, of supplying all the material wants, which even the 
loftiest spirits cannot hinder themselves from feeling. Thus, on the one 
side, improvement, on the other, labor ; on the one, intellectual and moral 
life, on the other, material life and mechanical employments ; on the one, 



CLAIMS OF HEAVEN AND EARTH ADJUSTED. 363 

That the world, in its actual constitution, has its 
temptations, its dangers, and its snares, we are not per- 
mitted to doubt. That it is wise to shun dissipation, to 
avoid even useless agitations, to seek, as much as may 
be, the repose of a retired life, there to refresh the soul, 
and very frequently to enter the closet in order to ex- 
amine ourselves before God, are maxims with which it 
is important to be thoroughly penetrated. The peace- 
ful uniformity of the pastoral life did not excuse Abra- 
ham from seeking a place favorable to prayer, under the 
shade of the oaks of Mamre. How often did our Sa- 
viour himself retire to the mountain in order to elevate 
his pure spirit to his Father and ours. But in the same 

a polity almost become a species of religion, on the other, industry with- 
out liberty, and very nearly without thought. Such was the organiza- 
tion of that strange people. This state of things is a feeble image ; still 
it is an image of the system we oppose. In fact, this system divides 
mankind into two classes, two communities ; the first of whom save their 
souls by withdrawing from the obligations of society, while the others 
destroy their souls by submitting to them. The former seek the food 
which endureth to life eternal, the latter ruin themselves by seeking the 
food that perisheth. And, finally, what is not only strange, but abomin- 
able, the one class labor, at the expense of their salvation, that the other 
may be at liberty to secure it ; for in the end it comes to this. However 
spiritual some may be, they have bodies, temporal interests, and families. 
They need the products of nature to feed them, the products of art to 
clothe them, laws to live in peace, and a government to protect them ; 
and all these wants, reducing them only to strict necessity, suppose a 
development of knowledge, — a mass of studies, of which it is difficult, 
at first sight, to form an idea. The possession of so much of these gross 
and absolutely necessary commodities as would be sufficient to render 
the return of famine impossible, attaches itself, as all will admit, to the 
highest speculations of science, and to the most ingenious inventions of 
the arts. So that, since it is impossible to live without food, without 
clothing and laws, it would be absolutely necessary, in the system under 
consideration, that one part of the human family must destroy their 
souls in order to secure the happiness of those which are saved. 



S64 vinet's miscellanies. 

degree that these precautions are conformed to Chris- 
tian wisdom, so is the idea chimerical, that all that we 
have to do to flee from the world, is to avoid contact 
with society. 

Vain hope ! in the heart of deserts, and in the deepest 
solitudes we may yet find the world. It is not met with 
altogether in the hurry of business or in the agitations 
of society. It lies in the depths of our heart. The 
world consists of our passions, which solitude does not 
extinguish, and to which it sometimes lends fresh 
energy. All the evils and troubles of life do not come, 
to borrow the expression of a great philosopher, " from 
not being able to remain in our chamber." They come 
from our not being able to escape from our natural 
corruption ; a corruption which follows us to the 
recesses of forests and of deserts, as it accompanies us 
into the streets and squares of our cities ; whilst, in 
the midst of the most complicated and difficult business, 
in the anxiety even of high functions, the Christian finds 
in his heart a solitude, a tranquil world, a retreat more 
inaccessible than that of his closet, where he lives by his 
soul, while his body is given to a thousand cares, where 
his spirit peacefully composes itself, even when his per- 
son seems to be diffused and dissipated. Many a hermit 
lives in the world ; many a man of the world lives in 
solitude. 

To renounce the necessities of our earthly sojourn, to 
regard all temporal activity as perdition, is to insult the 
wisdom of God, which has imposed them upon us. 
What ! could he create a world, the necessary effect 
of which would be to abuse himself ? What! are na- 
ture, society, labor, the institutions of his providence, 
so many things he has cursed ?„ On the contrary, is not 



CLATMS OF HEAVEN AND EARTH ADJUSTED. 365 

the world, in the variety of its aspects and movements, 
a temple, all the parts of which are destined for his 
glory ? What ! do idleness, apathy, isolation, useless- 
ness, alone honor him ? Far from us be such a thought! 
It is not by remaining motionless in the heavens, that 
the stars celebrate his greatness and power, but by re- 
volving swiftly in their immense orbits ; and it is from 
our activity, from the free and extensive development 
of our powers, that God has been pleased to derive a 
part of his glory. 

There are dangers in social life ! Certainly, I believe 
it ; they are such as to make us tremble. But God is 
doubtless not ignorant of this ; it is not certainly for 
nothing that he has promised his Holy Spirit ; or that 
Jesus has said to his disciples, " In the world ye shall 
have afflictions ; but be of good cheer, I have overcome 
the world." Since it has pleased God to place us in 
these formidable relations, can we doubt that his grace 
provides for the exigencies which are his work ? To 
believe otherwise, would be to call in question the good- 
ness, and perhaps the justice of God. 

Ties of family and of country, culture of arts and of 
knowledge, industrial and social activity, ye are the in- 
dispensable conditions of our existence ; ye are the road 
through which we must pass ; but ye are not the end 
of our being. That end is heaven. But the error lies 
in confounding the road with the end, the means with 
the result. The error lies in attaching ourselves to 
earth, which is the road, not to heaven, which is the end. 

This distinction is conformed to our text. It does 
not say, Do not occupy yourselves with the things of 
the earth, but, Do not set your affections on the things 
of the earth. Act as travellers who give to their busi- 



366 VINET S MISCELLANIES. 

ness all requisite attention, but are in haste to return to 
their native land. Act, — but for heaven ; labor, — but 
for God. 

Labor for God ; because it is your vocation, primi- 
tive and unchangeable, your supreme duty, the first and 
last end of your existence. Alas ! of all ideas, the most 
absurd is the most diffused. As if we existed by our- 
selves, we live for ourselves ! Creatures dependent at 
every point of our existence, we have made ourselves 
our own law, and our own object ! Committing sacri- 
lege every day, we conceal ourselves from our Creator ! 
Oh ! it is this that marks, even in noble spirits, the pro- 
found and general depravity of the human race. This 
is the seal of our reprobation, that we have forgotten 
why and for what we were sent into the world. All 
evil comes from this ; and each particular sin disap- 
pears in this great and primal sin. Christians ! I ad- 
jure you, by your very name, — live for him who has 
loved you. He had infinite rights over us as our Cre- 
ator, but, by a miracle of love, he has added infinite to 
infinite. He has consented that righteous blood should 
flow for you. He has given up to the pangs of death, 
Him, in whom his own holiness was reflected, as in the 
purest mirror. At the intercession of his Son, his wrath 
was turned away from you, to fall on that Son himself; 
Christ became sin, that your sins might be forgotten. 
And now, thanks be to him, ye may enter, creatures 
degraded and defiled, race adulterous and dishonored ! 
ye may enter, " with everlasting joy on your heads," 
into the house of your celestial bridegroom, to adorn 
yourselves anew with his glorious name, and to partake 
with angels, in a destiny of honor and peace. After 
this, is it necessary to say to you, Christians, labor for 



CLAIMS OF HEAVEN AND EARTH ADJUSTED. 367 

God ; attach yourselves to things above ? Ah ! if the 
name you bear has not told you all this already, all the 
words in the world will tell you nothing. 

Work for God, set your affection on things above ; 
because such an activity is the only one which offers to 
your energies an employment worthy of them. By 
acting only with reference to the world, what use can 
you make of those powers really proportioned to them? 
Whatever you do, you will always fall below your ca- 
pacity, and a whole world thrown into your soul would 
not fill its abyss. You may fill up your time, by attach- 
ing a work to each of your hours, but would it fill up 
life, thus to fill up its time ? Life ! Is it only a dimen- 
sion ? Is it merely a line without breadth, a chain 
which you must only take care to have unbroken ? 
When every hour of a long life has been marked by an 
employment or a thought, does it follow thence that 
you have lived ? O immortal beings, creatures of God! 
life consists in the employment of all your powers ; and 
you have divine powers. Life consists in the fulfilment 
of your destiny ; and your destiny is heaven ! Do not 
tell me you have lived, you who have a soul to aspire 
to the infinite, but which you have chained down to 
finite objects ; a heart to love God, whom you have not 
loved ; an intelligence to serve Him, but whom you have 
not served. You have passed through life, at the side 
of those who lived, but you have not lived. To live, 
my brethren, is to perform a work which lasts. It is to 
accumulate something more than vain recollections. It 
is to convert all our present life into the future ; it is to 
prepare for its death ; it is to make it in advance tri- 
umphant, glorious, full of immortality. To live, is to 
act on earth as a citizen of heaven. 



368 vinet's miscellanies. 

But at the close of our course, to be reduced to say : 
I have labored, but have already received all my rec- 
ompense. For a perishable work, I have received, from 
the world, a perishable reward. The world has my 
labor, and keeps it. I have received its pay, but I can- 
not retain it ; for I am about to leave the world. I 
leave it, with empty hands, with exhausted powers, with 
beggared spirit, and withered heart. I leave it, but I 
know not whither I am going. Alas ! why have I 
lived ? What business had I to live ? Have I truly 
lived ? Is it not a dream ? Was it, then, that I should 
consume myself for nothing, that I was brought into 
existence by my Creator ? Did I not feel something 
within me, greater than everything I have yet seen, 
everything I have yet felt, everything I have yet done ? 
Has not my soul urged me a thousand times, to take 
my flight above all sensible objects ? Yet what have I 
done but to prostitute that soul to objects of sense, and 
to everything which my awakened conscience, to-day, 
calls vanity ? O deception, illusion, misery ! O life 
lost ! O spirit abused, dissipated, degraded by vain 
thoughts ! O wretched past, without hope for the 
future ! 

I say nothing of the remorse which ought always to 
crown a life thus lost, but which does not always crown 
it. Last and painful blessing, or prelude and foretaste 
of the greatest pangs, remorse, we know, does not al- 
ways assist at that solemn and mournful review which 
the worldling involuntarily takes of his past life, when 
about to die. Upon this last and terrible subject, sup- 
ply what I do not say, and which no one can say but 
feebly. Represent to yourselves the busy worldling, 
arriving, exhausted and panting, with the long chain of 



CLAIMS OF HEAVEN AND EARTH ADJUSTED. 369 

his miserable toils, at the foot of the eternal tribunal ; 
and, penetrated with horror at the picture, you will no 
longer permit us to say, but you will say yourselves, Let 
us labor for God ; let us set our affections on things 
above, not on things on the earth. 

I am aware that some may say to us, " We cannot 
suitably care for the things of the earth, without taking 
some interest in them. We cannot succeed in a situa- 
tion without a certain inclination for the things of that 
situation, nor in a study without a taste for it, npr in 
any particular career, without loving it. Can it be be- 
lieved that our interest in heaven can take the place ot 
all these other interests ? Can it be supposed that the 
mere sentiment of duty should supply a sufficient stimu- 
lus ? Do we not, on the contrary, learn that the more 
we are attached to the things of heaven, the less fitness 
have we for the things of earth ? What then becomes 
of that boasted harmony of which you speak ?" 

The objection has weight ; and I wish no one to con- 
ceal from himself its force. It is certain that if we con- 
fined ourselves to contrasting two duties, that of being 
occupied assiduously with the things of earth, and that 
of loving only the things of heaven, we should only 
augment, instead of removing, the difficulty. But with 
a little attention, you will, I hope, see the objection rests 
on an error. It consists in taking the words of the 
apostle, "the things above," in a too spiritual sense. 
The things above are not precisely those of another 
world, but those of another sphere than the habitual one 
of our thoughts. They are not the things above our 
heads, but those which are above our natural senti- 
ments. The things on high are here below, if we wish 
it ; the things on high are the dispositions of a heart re- 
16* 



370 vinet's miscellanies. 

newed by the Spirit from above ; they are all those sen- 
timents, motives, impulses, which belong to a regenera- 
ted soul. To set our affection on things above, is to set 
our affection on God himself; it is to subordinate our 
life to him ; it is to seek and find God in everything. 

And what shall hinder any of you from finding Him 
in nature, the secrets of which you study with so much 
perseverance ; in the functions you fulfil with so much 
interest ; in that art you cultivate with so much ardor ? 
Why ! Is not God in all that is true, beautiful, great, 
useful ? Is he not in everything, except evil ? Is not 
everything which is good only himself? And in culti- 
vating the different domains of nature, of art, and of 
civil life, is it not God himself with which the Christian 
is occupied ; and in each of these things that interest 
him, is it not God also whom he admires and loves ? 

Loving God, then, is the secret which reconciles all. 
This is the secret of being occupied, with interest, in 
the things of earth, without ceasing to love the things 
of heaven. To love God is to love the life he has 
made, and the death he has ordained. But, ye divided 
hearts, who have dreamed of a compromise between 
heaven and earth, and have appeared incessantly tor- 
mented with fears and scruples, now know the cause of 
your condition ; ye fear God, but ye do not love him. 
Piety, doubtless, also has its scruples ; but let us take 
care not to confound the scruples of a delicate love, 
which is afraid of not giving everything to its object, 
with the apprehensions of a selfish heart, which is des- 
titute of the courage to do one of two things, either to 
give itself wholly to God, or wholly to the world. " Is 
this permitted ; is this not permitted ? Is this worldly ; 
is this Christian ? Mav we see such society, form such 



CLAIMS OF HEAVEN AND EARTH ADJUSTED. 371 

an enterprise, devote ourselves to such study ?■" This, 
in the mouth of a son, signifies, How shall I keep my 
heart for my father ? But, in the mouth of a slave, 
How far can I follow the desires of my heart, without 
irritating my master ? Miserable and vain discussions, 
the principle of which it is easy to discover. What is 
this perpetual bargaining between man and God ? What 
sort of a Christian is he who is perpetually occupied in 
minutely adjusting God's part and his own, and ever 
filled with the dread of making his own too little ? What 
sort of a believer is he who pretends to divide himself 
into two, the worldling and the believer, as if there was 
no absolute necessity that the worldling should be alto- 
gether a worldling, and the believer altogether a be- 
liever ? What kind of a man is he who has two hearts, 
the one for the world, the other for God ? What kind 
of devotion is that which makes its own conditions, 
which keeps its reserved rights, which stipulates its in- 
demnities ? O, love is a better casuist. Love has 
speedily cut the difficulty ; everything for God, nothing 
for self, is its motto. Everything for God, provided 
God is mine. Then let him enrich or impoverish my 
life, let him extend or limit my activity, let him gratify 
or oppose my tastes ; if I have my God, I have all things 
at once. It is him I wish to serve, him I wish to please ; 
the rest is a matter of indifference. 

If you love God, you will easily and at once see what 
employments are incompatible with his service. The 
love of God will endow you with a new sense, with a 
sure and delicate tact, by means of which you will 
recognize without difficulty, the works which please, 
and those that displease him ; for all kinds of activity 
are not good. This is the first effect of the love of 



372 vinet's miscellanies. 

God. There is another. It gives to the soul very 
great freedom. It renders legitimate a multitude of 
works, which could not be such without it. If you love 
God, you can enter into the bustle of the world, into 
the business of public life, into the culture of the arts 
and sciences : for all this you do for the glory of God, 
with gratitude and submission; all this leads you to 
God, instead of taking you far from Him ; and, if I may 
say so, your courses which, in appearance, are the most 
adventurous, never remove you far from port. The 
most elevated functions, and lowest offices, the greatest 
enterprises, and the most petty details, the work of a 
year, and the work of an hour, all are done for the Lord ; 
consequently, all are permitted, all are good. But be- 
yond this sphere, and without this direction, all is bad, 
even that which generally passes for legitimate and 
praiseworthy ; all is bad, for God is not in it. You can 
still be useful, merit and obtain esteem ; but with refer- 
ence to God, to yourselves, to eternity, you have done 
a work, vain, ungrateful, and wretched. 

Ill-instructed casuists, whose delicacy " strains out 
the gnat, and swallows the camel/' abandon, abandon 
the idle scruples which attach to some isolated actions, 
to some particular details of your life, and at once bring 
into question your entire life. It is of that life as a 
whole, of its general character, of the spirit which ani- 
mates it, which it concerns you, before all, to form an 
estimate. It is not some good works, it is not a facti- 
tious virtue, laboriously studied, and laboriously imi- 
tated, which will prepare you for heaven. It is not 
upon this or that observance neglected or performed, 
upon such an action permitted or forbidden, or in itself 
indifferent, that the chances of your eternity will turn. 



CLAIMS OF HEAVEN AND EARTH ADJUSTED. 373 

Doubtless each of your actions has its moral value, its 
character, its color ; but each, also, is but the natural 
product of a principle, and in this respect has a charac- 
ter which, rather than its own, represents your moral 
value. It is this internal value which you must know ; 
it is this also which God knows, and according to which 
he will appreciate and judge you. Do you know the 
standard by which he will do this ? He will measure 
you by your love to him. He will inquire only about 
one thing, Are you his, by your heart ? But his stand- 
ard ought to be yours ; and in this question, — Am I 
acting for God ; is it my desire to do his will ? — ought 
all your casuistry to be contained. 

See then, what wind fills your sails, and you will 
know whither you are going. Demand of yourselves 
an account of the sentiment which controls your life, 
and you will know what it is worth. Every one is able 
upon this point to give a precise answer ; besides, here 
are two tests, the application of which will leave you no 
further uncertainty. 

In the midst of the occupations and the cares which 
necessarily bind you to the earth, do you love to occupy 
yourselves with the things of heaven ? Have you a 
relish for the word of God ? Are you pleased to con- 
sult it, to elevate, by its means, the point of view from 
which you regard all your affairs, to stretch, as it 
were, over the limited horizon of your terrestrial life, 
the boundless horizon of eternity ? Many, when they 
involuntarily bring these two views together, find no 
relation, no harmony between them, but rather, a sort 
of contrariety. The aspect of heaven, and of divine 
things, disturbs them in their labors ; it deranges and dis- 
enchants them ; it vexes and oppresses them. They 



374 VINEt's MISCELLANIES. 

could wish they had never cast their eyes in that direc- 
tion ; for that of which they had a glimpse has made 
them fear, for a moment, that their life, which hitherto 
appeared filled up so well, is, in fact, filled up with van- 
ity. Thenceforward, they shun this view, and these 
reflections ; and, in order to protect their labors from 
such painful control, plunge themselves wholly in the 
present. In proportion as that vision of divine things is 
weakened and effaced, they speedily resume their former 
ardor ; but they are not active and persevering in the 
things of their profession, except on condition of caring 
as little as possible for their heavenly vocation. And yet 
they do not profess to renounce that heavenly vocation. 
They are entirely satisfied to have in reserve an asylum 
and place of repose ; resembling in this the prodigal 
son, wandering in the highways of the world, it pleases 
them now and then to think of their Father's house, but 
not to dwell there. They are pleased to believe ; they 
would dread to lose their religious conviction; but they 
dread still more to see it become too strong. They 
fear those unexpected moments, brought on by God 
himself, when the truth of religion suddenly appears all 
radiant with evidence, and all powerful with reality. 
They dread that tyranny of a living faith which would 
overturn their life, disconcert their plans, give another 
course to their activity, and destroy the position they 
have assumed in the world. Frightened at that light- 
ning, they hasten to shut their eyes, and, by a strange 
contradiction, dread both scepticism and their faith. 
Brethren, do such people labor for the earth, or for 
heaven ? 

I have spoken of another touchstone. It is the 
thought of death. Let any one who doubts as to the 



CLAIMS OF HEAVEN AND EARTH ADJUSTED. 375 

legitimacy of his efforts, and the employment of his life, 
place himself in the presence of death. Let him, with 
closed eyes, consider his last hour, that hour, when, as 
it has been said with propriety, " There remains nothing 
with us, but what we have given." Let him for a mo- 
ment feel, that he no longer belongs to the earth, that 
he lies upon his funeral bed, that he listens to that sol- 
emn warning, " Son of man, return, give an account of 
thy stewardship." Let him say to himself, that in a 
few hours, lying under the ground, he will be as much 
a stranger to what occurs six feet above him, as if he 
had never formed a part in the number of the living. 
Let him see vanishing and becoming extinct, the splen- 
dor of renown, and the power of reputation, his personal 
influence, his property, his name and his memory ; and 
proceeding to his last inventory, let him take account 
of what remains to him, that is, I repeat it, of what he 
has given. Well, has this activity, these labors and 
services, this fortune, or this poverty, been given, as it 
might be wished, wholly to God ? Has he performed 
works which can follow him ? Can he take with him 
into the other world, and lay down at the feet of his 
Master, all his labors, all his studies, all his life ? Was 
it for God that he used his position, fulfilled his 
charge, cultivated his mind, increased his fortune ? On 
which side was his life, apparent in the world, or hid 
with Christ in God ? Is he about to be separated from 
everything, or is he about to find everything ? Is he 
going to die, or is he going to live ? If in the pres- 
ence of this solemn thought of death, he does not feel his 
past life a burden, which oppresses him, but as wealth 
which supports him ; if the thought of the activity 
which is about to be interrupted does not inspire him 



376 vinet's miscellanies. 

with regret, but with hope, then that activity is good ; 
he may yield himself to it without fear ; for, in occupy- 
ing himself with the things of earth, he labors for those 
of heaven. 

This, my brethren, is what we would impress upon 
your mind, and upon our own. No truth is more im- 
portant. A moment will infallibly come, when it will 
appear evident to us ; but we ought to anticipate that 
moment ; for the same truth which is salutary to-day, 
may be overwhelming to-morrow. Salutary while life 
yet belongs to us, overwhelming when that life is 
leaving us. If, then, our life needs to be reformed, 
let us reform it ; that is to say, let us reform our 
hearts, "For out of the heart proceed the springs of 
life." 

Reform our hearts ! what an expression, my brethren ! 
Ah ! when the dead in their tombs shall be heard cry- 
ing out, We live, it will be permitted to sinful men also, 
to cry out, We reform our hearts. To love God above 
all other things, to love nothing but in subordination to 
Him, to submit our life to a single principle, and our 
conduct to a single impulse, can this be done by a sim- 
ple act of our will ? Upon this point let us consult our 
own experience. It declares to us our profound inca- 
pacity to displace, by ourselves, the centre of our life. 
Consult the experience of believers. They inform us, 
that it is by faith in a crucified, glorified Saviour, that 
they have found the power to do it. Consult the New 
Testament. It teaches us that in this great work, " it 
is God that produces in us the will and the execution, 
according to his good pleasure." Let us not seek to 
deceive ourselves ; let us not boast some external re- 
forms, of which we have found ourselves capable ; the 



CLAIMS OF HEAVEN AND EARTH ADJUSTED. 377 

reformation of our habits is nothing, without the refor- 
mation of our heart. Let us frankly acknowledge our 
weakness ; let us ask, let us entreat, let us pray without 
ceasing, till assistance come, till our heart is altogether 
where our treasure is ; till we are one in thought and 
affection with Jesus, till we have, in our life, but one 
aim, the service and glory of the Father who sent him. 
May the Lord shed upon us all his spirit of grace and 
supplication ! 



THE PURSUIT OF HUMAN GLORY INCOMPATI- 
BLE WITH FAITH. 



■ How can ye believe, who receive honor one of another, and seek not the honor 
which cometh from God only."— John v. 44. 



Glory! how beautiful is that word! How many 
hearts it has caused to leap! Is there one who, in 
all possible cases, can hear it or utter it, without emo- 
tion ! Primitive and indestructible tendency of human 
nature, the love of glory lives in all hearts, is found in 
all conditions, occupies a place in all enterprises, and 
may be compared to that wind, loved by mariners, with- 
out which the oar and the paddle would in vain fatigue 
a waveless sea. 

Ask honest men, endeavor to reach the bottom of 
consciences more concealed, you will learn what power 
the presence, the expectation, the name even of glory 
exert over all those who are animated apparently by 
other motives. In the efforts of the patriot, the devo- 
tion of the hero, the perseverance of the philanthropist, 
the ardor of the philosopher, nay more, in the specula- 
tions of the man of business, the love of glory has almost 
always a place, and very often the first place. 

" What !" exclaims that poor and obscure artisan, his 
brow all covered with the sweat of labor, " what ! I pre- 
tend to glory ! You may assure yourself I never cared 



HUMAN GLORY INCOMPATIBLE WITH FAITH. 379 

for it." Yes, perhaps, when obliged to devote yourself 
entirely to the care of your subsistence, you had no 
thought but for the first necessities of life. Then that 
indestructible love of glory slept in your bosom. But 
the first wants appeased, how prompt it will be to awake ! 
Do not deceive yourself. What is called glory among 
heroes, politicians, and men of genius, will, under 
another name, become one of your principal motives of 
action. What are the pleasures you expect from that 
money which your industry accumulates ? Ease, do 
you say, security, material advantages ? It may be so, 
but to be honest, you still count among these the plea- 
sure of passing for a rich man, and of securing that kind 
of consideration which is not easily refused to wealth. 
This, then, is glory. 

There is in every soul an imperious want, a violent 
desire to add to its individual life, a foreign life, if I may 
say so, a life beyond itself, the seat of which is in the 
opinions of others. To be praised, admired, or at least, 
esteemed, is the secret desire of every human being 
whom misery does not compel to degrade himself to a 
lower ambition, and whom a profound degradation has 
not rendered insensible to the opinion of his fellows. 
We have, indeed, already within ourselves a judge, who 
is very indulgent with reference to our qualities and 
conduct ; but this judge does not suffice us. It appears 
that, irresistibly driven to the sentiment of our nothing- 
ness, and dreading to be compelled some day to unde- 
ceive ourselves, we feel the necessity of appealing to 
other men to aid our self-love, and of deriving from 
them an additional life, which we find not in ourselves. 
So true is it that this pursuit is derived from a con- 
sciousness of our weakness, that of all men, he who 



380 vinet's miscellanies. 

should seem the proudest, would be a man to whom, 
upon this point, his own opinion was sufficient. 

Do not, then, deceive yourselves. Rich or poor, high 
or low, we all love glory. This craving for the esteem 
of others follows us as our shadow. It glides with us 
everywhere. Chased away under one form, it repro- 
duces itself in another. From retreat to retreat, from 
corner to corner, it eagerly pursues its timid enemy, 
humility. Does she think she has escaped from it, she 
lifts up her eyes and finds it before her. The love of 
glory can find a place even in the tears and mortifying 
confessions of penitence. It secretly animates the voice 
of the moralist who thunders against glory ; and some- 
times, alas, it accompanies into the pulpit the preacher 
who condemns it. 

We cannot deny, that, in a certain degree, the esteem 
of others ought to be a real want of each individual. 
In the first place, the privation of this esteem would 
divest us of a greater part of the advantages attached to 
the social state. What credit is to a merchant, good rep- 
utation is, in the same degree, to every member of society. 
In the second place, without some mutual good-will, 
society would not be supportable, and good-will is 
inseparably connected with esteem. Besides, public 
confidence is the first condition of the good we desire 
to do. To be refused this confidence, would paralyze 
our best intentions. It is necessary, then, to obtain and 
to keep it. All this explains and justifies the natural 
sentiment which causes us to place a good reputation 
in the number, and even in the first rank, of temporal 
blessings. Under these various relations, it has a right 
to the same care which we give to our health ; it has a 
right to such care, more especially because it not only 



HUMAN GLORY INCOMPATIBLE WITH FAITH. 381 

bears upon our own welfare, but upon that of our family. 
I go even further ; I acknowledge that, in the absence 
of Christianity, the love of esteem is one of the best 
things which can be met with in fallen man. In the 
absence of an object worthy of our homage, it is an 
indirect homage to those moral ideas of which society 
cannot divest itself, and is the best of those social ele- 
ments which keep men united. But how different from 
this necessary care of a temporal blessing, for which we 
ought to give thanks to God, as for all others, is that 
pursuit of glory, from which we see issuing two very 
clearly marked characteristics. The first, that of mak- 
ing the esteem of men the rule of our actions. The 
second, of seeking, in addition to a good reputation, praise, 
fame, celebrity. This is what our text condemns ; the 
praise of men as an end of our actions, their approba- 
tion preferred to that of God, the glory which comes 
from men eagerly desired, the glory which comes from 
God neglected. 

Remark particularly that my text does not only say, 
ye love to receive glory from one another ; it also adds, 
ye seek not the glory which cometh from God alone. 
The glory, then, which comes from God only is a thing 
to be sought after. The following words of Jesus serve 
as a supplement to those which he uttered on another 
occasion : " There is no one who hath forsaken house, 
or brother, or sister, or father, or mother, or children, 
for my sake and the gospel's, who shall not in the pres- 
ent time receive an hundred fold." (Mark x. 29, 30.) 
In like manner, there is no one who, for the love of 
Jesus Christ, has renounced human glory, who shall not 
receive an hundred fold from Him who required the sac- 
rifice. In the kingdom of God, then, there is no sacrifice 



382 vinet's miscellanies. 

without compensation, and the compensations of God 
are infinite. In our souls, there is no want he will not 
satisfy, but in his own way ; that is to say, by giving 
us, instead of the gross aliment which our deluded hun- 
ger seeks, a purer aliment, which it knows not. We 
were born for glory. Well, he invites us to seek it. The 
same invitation is abundantly reproduced in the gospel. 
There, glory is represented as an object worthy of our 
pursuit, as the final recompense of our toils, as the price 
of the blood of Jesus Christ. The blessings of heaven 
are offered to those " who, by persevering in good works, 
seek honor, glory, and immortality." 

Here, it is no longer man that praises man ; it is no 
longer the wretched flattering the wretched ; it is the 
human soul satisfying itself with true glory in the bosom 
of the God of glory. It is the Christian, expecting and 
obtaining from the mouth of the only witness whose re- 
gard he seeks, these noble and precious words, " Well 
done, good and faithful servant ; thou hast been faithful 
over a few things ; I will advance thee to many things." 
This is the glory which ought to be desired, which ought 
to be the end of life, — a glory we cannot dispense with 
without crime. It is the glory which cometh from God 
alone. 

But as to human glory, Jesus Christ is so far from 
authorizing the pursuit of it, that he declares it incom- 
patible with Christian faith. "How can ye believe," 
says he, " who love to receive glory one from another, 
and seek not the glory that cometh from God alone." 

Indeed, this love of human glory is one of the princi- 
pal quicksands of Christian faith. We can more easily 
and much sooner vanquish all other obstacles. When 
the soul, oppressed by the consciousness of its sins, and 



HUMAN GLORY INCOMPATIBLE WITH FAITH. 383 

anxious respecting its future destiny, turns in the direc- 
tion of religion, it meets, on its way, numerous enemies 
of its salvation. Proud reason is there objecting to the 
obscurity of the Christian doctrines, and urging it to re- 
ject what it cannot comprehend. Indolence dissuades 
it from the conquest of a kingdom, " which is taken by 
force, and of which only the violent take possession ;" 
and sensuality makes it afraid of a chaste and austere 
life. But when all these perfidious counsellors have been 
successively driven aw T ay, human glory, more dangerous 
still, and more certain to be heard, presents itself. 

If to believe were merely to recognize as true, certain 
facts and doctrines of the gospel ; if faith were only an 
act of the mind, in which the heart had no part, it 
would doubtless be impossible to see how the desire of 
human glory could hinder us from believing. But to 
believe in Jesus Christ is another thing ; it is to re- 
ceive, to choose, to embrace him, with all those quali- 
ties which are ascribed to him in the gospel. It is to 
submit to him in our heart, our will, our life ; in a word, 
it is to become the subject, the servant of this divine 
Master. But. there is a disposition of soul in which, 
though the mind is subdued, the heart is yet undecided 
and rebellious. We desire to believe, and cannot ; or 
rather we believe, and do not believe. As to convic- 
tion, indeed, we are within the exact terms of the gos- 
pel, but we are not within the gospel itself. We pos- 
sess it as a treasure of which we have not the key, with 
which we can do nothing, and upon which we cannot 
live. " We have a name to live, but are dead." 

I believe it important to insist on this singular state 
of the soul, because it is common and little noticed. 
There are among us, perhaps, few sceptics, properly 



384 VINET S MISCELLANIES. 

speaking, who account to themselves for their scepti- 
cism. But there are among us many persons whose 
intellects believe, whose hearts doubt. Surprised them- 
selves at the discordance which they observe between 
their opinions and their feelings, they seek for the cause, 
and cannot imagine it. If they had searched thoroughly, 
they would have discovered it in the illicit retention 
and guilty cherishing of an idol which they had not the 
courage to sacrifice. Ordinarily it is some unhappy 
bias which strikes their Christianity with paralysis and 
death ; some forbidden thing, obstinately kept in their 
tent, which has caused the curse to rest upon it. This 
is the secret of so many half-conversions, of so much 
defective Christianity. This explains the character of 
those men who, according to the remarkable expression of 
the apostle, " are ever learning, but never coming to the 
knowledge of the truth." It is said that when a mighty ship 
is on the point of being launched into the sea, when all is 
ready, when the last blow of the axe has caused the last 
support to fall, the spectators are often surprised to see the 
noble vessel remain immovable on its smooth base ; the 
curious eye seeks everywhere for the mysterious cause 
of this immobility ; and in a short time a mere pebble is 
discovered under its keel, which resists the whole force 
of that colossal ship. Do you, then, from whom the se- 
cret of your delay and irresolution on the way to truth 
has been concealed, search well, and in some unseen 
recess of the soul, you will perceive some favorite incli- 
nation, some inveterate habit, some passion ashamed to 
show itself, which, in its obscure retreat, opposes the 
generous launch which bears you towards the Saviour. 
Let us apply this general observation to human glory, 
and set forth a truth, which presents itself in the very 



HUMAN GLORY INCOMPATIBLE WITH FAITH. 385 

commencement of the subject. The moral law is a law 
of perfection ; this every one will admit without diffi- 
culty. But in order that the pursuit of glory should 
not prevent us from keeping this law, it is necessary 
that the being from whom we expect glory, should be 
perfect in disposition, principle and action. If he is not, 
he will not require from us perfection in return for his 
approbation, or as a pledge of it ; for you may be sure 
he will not put his admiration and praise at a price so 
high. But more than this, he will with difficulty per- 
mit himself to be surpassed. Perfection, nay, the very 
tendency to perfection, will offend his jealous eyes. He 
will deny the necessity of this tendency, or rather he 
will deny the reality of it in your heart ; he will mis- 
represent your intentions ; he will call good evil, and 
candor hypocrisy. What I say upon this point, I do 
not say of this or that individual, or of any one in par- 
ticular ; for it would be absurd to pretend that no man 
would consent to find his superior in another ; admira- 
tion and enthusiasm are tacitly involved in the confes- 
sion of inferiority. I speak of the world in general^ of 
its tendencies and its maxims. I compare its morality 
with that of the law of perfection ; and I see that it is 
separated from it by an abyss. I recognize that in all 
times the tendency to perfection has cost those who 
have frankly avowed it, either repose or fortune, honor, 
or even life. Whence I conclude that he who desires 
the glory which comes from the world, must descend to 
the standard of the world, by espousing its maxims, or 
at least taking care not to profess, I do not say oppo- 
site, but only loftier maxims. That we may leave 
nothing equivocal in this subject, let us reply to those, 
who cite the universal enthusiasm excited by generous 

17 



386 VINET S MISCELLANIES. 

actions, and the spontaneous acclamations which greet 
the appearance of a great character, that there is noth- 
ing in such facts which contradicts what we have ad- 
vanced. That man has not lost the power of admiring 
moral beauty ; that the poetry of virtue has a charm to 
him ; that such bright flashes dazzle him ; that even in 
the person of an adversary or an enemy, certain traits 
of veracity, fidelity, self-sacrifice and mercy, irresistibly 
seize upon his heart, — who could or would deny ? But 
I have spoken of the law ; of the law which embraces 
all these virtues, but which includes them under the no- 
tion of obedience ; of the law, which is to all such oc- 
casional manifestations what the light is to the light- 
ning ; of the law fulfilled, but not absorbed by love ; of 
the law or system according to which man does not 
rise alone, choose his own virtues, consult his own na- 
ture, take his own impressions for a guide or seek his 
own glory ; of a law in which he subordinates himself 
to rule, loses sight of himself before the rule, and re- 
tains, in the freedom of love, all the submission of fear, 
and in an intelligent fidelity, all the scrupulousness of 
blind obedience. Perfection is here, and nowhere else. 
It would not even be found in the practice of all the 
virtues, if these virtues were not united in one bundle 
by the tie of obedience. But is this the law of the 
world ? Has the world received it ? Can the world 
endure it ? And if it is not in its nature either to re- 
ceive or endure it, does it reserve its suffrages and its 
applause for those who have made it their law ? And 
the question is not, whether in the depths of the human 
conscience, this perfect virtue may not, in its principles, 
receive a silent homage ; whether many persons do not 
internally, and so to speak, unconsciously decree the 



HUMAN GLORY INCOMPATIBLE WITH FAITH. 387 

first rank to that virtue which they know not how to 
obey, but ever wish to obey. This I believe ; but whence 
comes the applause of the world ? For whom does it 
prepare crowns ? For whom does it raise thrones ? 
And, to present the same question in another form ; ii 
one who obeys the perfect law obtains its homage, on 
what ground does he obtain it ? To what part of his 
being and his life is it addressed ? Is it not to that 
which may be insulated and detached from the funda- 
mental principle of his conduct ? Is it not the natural 
man that they admire in him ? Has the supernatural 
man, the new man, the man of God and of the law, any 
share in that homage ? You know as well as I ; you 
perceive without difficulty, that here the exception con- 
firms the rule ; and you will conclude with me, that to 
secure the glory which comes from men, he must lend 
himself to their maxims, and proportion himself to 
their measure ; that he must not surpass, that is, humble 
those, from whom he expects glory ; and, on the other 
hand, in order to be perfect, that he must seek the re- 
gard, and be ambitious of the approbation, of a perfect 
being. 

Let us now descend from these general ideas to ap- 
plication and details. 

How can the soul, which prefers the glory which 
comes from men to that which comes from God only, 
believe in Jesus with a real and efficacious faith ? He 
has been compelled to acknowledge Jesus as the Son 
of God ; but the world refuses him that august title. 
Since the appearance of that divine Prince of human- 
ity, the world has heaped opprobrium upon the adorers 
of Jesus. An external and formal adherence to him 
has been permitted in consideration of circumstances ; 



388 VINET S MISCELLANIES. 

but earnest and efficient faith has generally been ex- 
posed to derision. Is it, then, easy for him who values 
the opinion of men, to confess that divine Saviour, 
still spit upon and scourged as in the Prsetorium, still 
crucified as in Golgotha ? And must he not, in order 
to lie prostrate at his feet, have bid adieu forever to the 
esteem and approbation of that crowd which reject 
him ? 

" He that says he believes in Jesus Christ, ought to 
live even as Jesus Christ lived." But how did he live ? 
In a manner so different from received opinions, that it 
may be said that his religion is quite opposed to that of 
the world. For the world has its religion, wherein all 
the passions of the flesh are elevated into divinities. 
Here is pride ; but we are to follow the steps of him 
who was meek and lowly in heart : here is sensuality ; 
but we are to conform our spirit to his who had not 
where to lay his head : here is independence ; yet we 
are to resemble him who came into the world to serve, 
not to be served : here is selfishness, yet we are to be 
clothed with the dispositions of him who gave his life for 
his friends. In a word, we must embrace a life, some 
of whose virtues please the world, because they are of 
use to it, but the general character of which wounds 
and condemns it. How can all this be done by him 
who cleaves to the approbation of the world ? 

How, for example, shall he use his Christian liberty, 
who is afraid that this liberty may pass for presumption 
and arrogance ? How shall he conform his life and his 
manners to evangelical simplicity, who dreads to hear 
himself taxed with parsimony and meanness ? How 
shall he persevere in the exercise of Christian devotion, 
who dreads to see falling upon his family and upon him- 



HUMAN GLORY INCOMPATIBLE WITH FAITH. 389 

self, some of those insulting epithets which ignorance 
and envy pour upon piety ? A thousand considerations 
of this kind form themselves around him like a net, 
which binds and imprisons him. At every step he 
wishes to take, he is held back by some new fear ; 
vexed, he surveys from the place he dares not quit, the 
course he ought to pursue ; amidst a thousand emotions 
unceasingly repressed, and of repentings which exhaust 
the soul, he arrives at the tomb without ever having 
known the joyous liberty of faith. 

And even if we did not risk a departure from the 
path of virtue, while following the attraction of human 
glory, such a pursuit would not be less incompatible with 
the spirit of the gospel. In fact there is, according to 
the gospel, but one rule of our conduct, the will of God ; 
one glory to seek, the glory that comes from God. But 
suppose we prefer to that glory the glory that comes 
from men, and content ourselves with making common 
cause with them ; we invade the eternal rights of God, 
so firmly established in the gospel, by impiously erecting 
the tribunal of man at the side of, and even above, the 
tribunal of God. 

The God of the gospel, my brethren, is a jealous 
God ; he is a God who will sutler no division, either in 
adoration or obedience. To seek our law anywhere 
but in him, is to renounce our Lawgiver ; to seek glory 
anywhere else is to renounce our Judge. And surely 
he must hold himself honored by the rivals we give 
him ! Worms of the earth, creatures of a day, poor 
sinners, equalled in our esteem, mingled in our homage 
with the eternal Jehovah, King of immensity, Sovereign 
of hearts, adorable Source of all holiness ! The fickle 
judgment of a feeble intelligence preferred to the infal- 



390 VINET S MISCELLANIES. 

lible judgment of the God of truth ! Glory asked of 
shame, shame cast upon glory ! For there is not even 
equality here ; the creature is not equalized to the Cre- 
ator ; it is placed above him. From the very moment 
that the comparison is conceived, the outrage is con- 
summated, the Creator is degraded below the creature ; 
because in such an approximation, to hesitate is already 
to choose. 

And who could imagine to what glory we immolate 
the rights of our Creator ! If it were a splendid exam- 
ple, if it were the suffrages of all people, and of every 
age, we should not be less culpable ; yet such a thing 
might be conceived. But we do not seek so high for 
pretexts to insult God. On the contrary, we descend 
exceedingly low, to the very dust, to solicit praise. It 
is to the false tongue of a neighbor, to the smiling flat- 
tery of a wit, to the condescension of some earthly 
grandee, to the fear of ridicule, to the false customs of 
society, to some transitory fashion, to the pleasure of 
making a little stir in the circle of our acquaintances, 
that we wantonly abandon the dignity of the govern- 
ment of God, and the honor of his name. Behold the 
glory of man which we prefer to the glory of God ! 
Certainly, my brethren, it would be difficut to enlarge 
upon this subject, without a profound contempt of 
ourselves. 

Conclude, then, that the pursuit of human glory, by 
hindering us from believing in Jesus Christ, or what is 
the same thing, from applying that faith, is incompatible 
with Christianity. 

There is only one kind of approbation which can be 
sought without danger ; in heaven, that of God, on 
earth, that of the saints. And we must not seek even 



HUMAN GLORY INCOMPATIBLE WITH FAITH. 391 

the latter, except as a manifestation of the divine ap- 
probation. In general, the reproofs of the just are of 
more value than their praises. Let us not forget those 
beautiful words of David, " Let the righteous smite me, 
it shall be a favor ; let him reprove me, it shall be to 
me an excellent balm." (Ps. cxli. 5.) He has not 
spoken thus of the praises of the righteous. 

And let none oppose to us such passages as the fol- 
lowing, " Whatsoever things are of good report, think 
of." (Phil. iv. 8.) "Be careful to do that which is 
good, not only before the Lord, but before men." (2 Cor. 
viii. 21.) These passages, the true meaning of which 
is established by the general spirit of the gospel, are 
authoritatively explained in those precious words of the 
Master, " Let your light so shine before men, that others, 
seeing your good works, may glorify your Father in 
heaven." Here, not the creature, but the Creator is 
to be glorified. And the esteem of men is presented to 
the Christian, not as his aim, nor even as his encourage- 
ment. Let all the glory return to God, and then let 
him " give us of his own." Let God glorify us, if he 
deems it best. Such, upon this matter, is the sentiment 
of the true Christian. Our doctrine, then, remains en- 
tire. The pursuit of human glory is incompatible with 
the profession of the Christian. He ought to be ambi- 
tious only of the glory that comes from God. 

Brethren, if our object were not to induce you to 
conform to a precept, and to follow a counsel, but to 
acknowledge a truth, you have already heard enough. 
You do not need arguments to convince you that the 
approbation of God is alone worthy of being sought. 
For this purpose, you have only, in thought, to pass the 
limits of time, and transport yourselves to the last 



392 vixet's miscellanies. 

day, and the tribunal of God. There you will see the 

value of human opinion. The glory of the world, for- 
merly so dazzling in your eyes, will appear to you like 
one of those deceitful fires which rise from the marshes, 
and owe their pale rays only to the thick darkness of 
the night. That renown which, it is said, ought to pass 
through an ages, and levy a perpetual tribute of admira- 
tion from posterity, will appear to you no more than the 
puerile chimera of a vain-glorious delirium. The infinite 
value you have attached to the opinion of your compan- 
ions in trial, will appear to you an inexpressibly ridicu- 
lous blunder. Your immortal glory, as you are pleased 
to call the celebrity of a day, will be dissipated and ab- 
sorbed in a glory truly immortal, the glory of God and 
of saints. You will there feel, — God forbid that it should 
be with bitter regret, — that these simple words of your 
heavenly Father, " Well done, good servant, thou hast 
been faithful over a few things,'*'' will dim the lustre of 
those pompous terms with which you have filled your 
panegyrics, wherein you have audaciously stolen the 
titles of the Creator to decorate a creature. "Well 
done, good servant, thou hast been faithful over a few 
things !'' Who on earth contents himself with such 
a slight praise ? But in heaven, and from the mouth of 
Jehovah, such praise is of immense value ; and never 
did adulation the most extravagant, enthusiasm the most 
intoxicating, fill him, who was the object of it, with a 
transport comparable to that with which these simple 
words can fill the glorified believer. 
- This, my brethren, is what you may say to yourselves. 
You may further say, that even on earth, the triumphs 
of self-love are vain and miserable ; that they do not fill 
the heart ; that they can only deepen more and more 



HUMAN GLORY INCOMPATIBLE WITH FAITH. 393 

the immense and devouring void ; that the first effect of 
a triumph is to produce the desire for another ; that 
changes of opinion are excessive and cruel ; and that 
he is a fool who places his happiness at the mercy of 
that fickle and inconsistent opinion. You will say to 
yourselves that, when the craving for esteem and ap- 
plause seizes upon a soul, it permits nothing good to 
subsist along with it ; that there is no longer room for 
love in a heart which glory fills ; that nothing withers 
the soul like this dangerous passion ; and that it steals 
from us the purest pleasures and the noblest emotions 
of which the soul is susceptible. 

I repeat it, then, that, if to be conformed to truth it 
were only necessary to know it, you might rely upon 
yourselves for the success of this discourse. But ex- 
perience has proved to you the contrary. There are a 
thousand truths that have subdued your intellect, with- 
out controlling your life. Know, then, that this work 
is not yours, and that you will never save yourselves. 
Ah ! you feel it, perhaps. To renounce the esteem of 
the world, to cease making it an end and a rule, and to 
seek only the approbation of God, is a miracle which 
belongs only to God to work in you, and which it is 
your privilege to ask of him. May you, then, may we 
all, ask it of him, with sincerity, earnestness, and per- 
severance. May we see forming in our hearts a holy 
tranquillity, with reference to the judgments of men. 
Freed from the heavy chains of opinion, may we feel 
ourselves free to believe, to love, to obey, till the day 
comes, when, delivered forever from that importunate 
vision of human glory, we shall rejoice in the rays of a 
true glory, in the bosom of our God and of his Christ. 

17* 



POWER OF THE FEEBLE* 



; There are many members, but only one body. The eye cannot say to the hand, 
I have no need of thee ; nor the head to the feet, I have no need of you. Nay, 
those members which seem to be the feeblest, are the most necessary." — 1 Cor. 
xii. 20-22. 



" The kingdom of heaven cometh not with observa- 
tion." It was by these words, and many others like 
them, that Jesus Christ turned the attention of the Jews, 
from their accustomed prospect of glory, splendor, and 
power, to that of the gospel, composed as it is of far 
different aspects. But the friend of the simple and the 
meek, the God of the poor in spirit, the Prince of the 
little and the feeble, could not make himself understood 
by a multitude of carnal Israelites, carried away by false 
greatness. The same thing happens in our days; his 
humility conceals him from our proud hearts. We vol- 
untarily make a selection in his gospel, leaving to him 
the lowliness he has chosen, and taking to ourselves the 
loftiness he has disdained. And here I do not speak 
only of external pomp, of which it is easy to see the 
nothingness, but of the splendor of certain spiritual 
gifts which distinguish a Christian, without the aid of 
external circumstances, and may appear to us worthy 
of our ambition. But it is not ambition, whatever fine 

* Preached on the anniversary of the day of Pentecost. 



POWER OF THE FEEBLE. 395 

name it may assume, which is favored by the gospel ; 
and we find the proof of this, in the passage in which 
St. Paul contrasts the various gifts which the Spirit of 
God had just shed upon the church, " There are many 
members, but only one body. And the eye cannot say 
to the hand, I have no need of thee ; nor the head to 
the feet, I have no need of you. Nay, those members 
of the body which appear the feeblest, are the most 
necessary." 

The day of Pentecost was, even to the carnal eye, a 
very great day. The mighty rushing wind, the tongues 
of fire, the miraculous gifts suddenly distributed among 
the apostles, and that extraordinary energy which made 
them new men, were doubtless all wonderful. Never- 
theless, the festival of the Holy Spirit includes still 
greater things ; and the gospel, which to-day recounts 
to us the effusion of these splendid gifts, authorizes us, 
by the voice of St. Paul, to proclaim the superiority of 
some other gifts more obscure and inconsiderable in 
appearance, of which the Holy Spirit is equally the 
author. This is what we propose to do, to-day, while 
explaining these closing words of the apostle, " the mem- 
bers of the body which appear the feeblest, are yet the 
most necessary." 

The Greek word rendered feeble, in our versions of 
the Bible, does not, in this place, signify feebleness, pro- 
perly speaking, but inferiority. The more feeble mem- 
bers, are those less remarkable, or less distinguished. 
Besides, if the same word is used to designate two dif- 
ferent ideas, it is because they have some relation to 
each other, at least in the vulgar opinion. It is so com- 
mon, when one possesses power, to exhibit it, and even 
to make a parade of it, that a life, obscure, concealed, 



396 vinet's miscellanies. 

modest, almost always suggests the idea of timidity and 
feebleness. If this opinion is often well founded in the 
world, it is not so in the church ; and it is the church 
which is referred to in my text. This body is the 
church, these members are the members of the church, 
and the more feeble are those who have received the 
less splendid and apparently less elevated gifts of the 
Holy Spirit. Such are the feeble members which Paul 
represents as the most necessary. But as the apostle 
has spoken, in the whole chapter, of the gifts of the 
Holy Spirit, since it is with reference to these,, that he 
distinguishes the members of the church as strong and 
feeble, we believe that we may present the idea of the 
apostle in this form. The gifts of the Holy Spirit, which 
are the most feeble, are also the most necessary. 

The gifts of the first rank, I mean the more splendid 
gifts, are of two kinds. Those that are supernatural, 
such as speaking in unknown tongues, curing diseases, 
predicting the future ; secondly, those that are natural, 
some of which relate to the heart, such as triumphant 
joy, a faith changed, as it were, to sight, a kind of an- 
ticipation of the privileges of the celestial city ; while 
others relate to the intellect, as the gift of teaching and 
convincing, a persuasive eloquence, profound knowl- 
edge of the Scriptures, and generally all those talents 
which can be applied to the service of religion. Such 
are the gifts of the first order ; but, in the present day, 
we cannot accurately distinguish, in such an enumera- 
tion, those natural talents of the mind from those pecu- 
liar sentiments which grace has produced in a Christian 
soul. 

In the train of these gifts, to speak after the manner 
of the apostle, come the gifts that are more feeble. 



POWER OF THE FEEBLE. 397 

These are humility, by which a believer abases himself 
before God, and regards others as more excellent than 
himself; fidelity which will not be unjust in the smallest, 
any more than in the greatest things ; purity of man- 
ners and of thought, which keeps undenled the temple 
where the Holy Spirit deigns to dwell; truth which 
would not, for the greatest bribe, open its lips to the 
slightest falsehood ; contentment, which bears all losses 
without a murmur, because its real treasure cannot be 
taken from it ; activity, which remembers that the king- 
dom of God consists not in words, but in deeds; charity, 
in fine, but not charity factitious, borrowed, learnt by 
heart, but a true love, a tenderness of soul, which alter- 
nately pities and consoles, soothes and beseeches ; which 
cannot revile or despise ; which bears all things, excuses 
all things ; which rejoices not in iniquity, but rejoices 
in the truth. 

Would you not, my brethren, regard him as supremely 
happy who had received from the goodness of God all 
these gifts united ? Well, one may possess them all, 
without making any noise in the world. A multitude 
of persons may have this assemblage of gifts truly di- 
vine, without being remarked, without being suspected. 
And in what caverns, you will ask me, in what deserts 
are these excellent persons concealed ? In what deserts ? 
In your cities, in your villages, in the midst of yourselves, 
to whom they hold relations of business and of friend- 
ship ; in the world, where they have, so to speak, a pro- 
fession, a post of duties. If you cannot discover them, 
look to yourselves ! You have the eye of flesh that 
sees their bodies, the eye of self-love which sees de- 
fects ; you have not the spiritual eye which seeks com- 
placently in every soul, not vices and imperfections, but 



398 VINET S MISCELLANIES. 

the glorious and delightful traces of the presence of the 
divine Spirit. And how otherwise could you perceive 
such persons ? They have neither the vanity which 
pushes itself forward, nor the talent which, willing, or 
unwilling, compels belief. Let me speak plainly upon 
this point. Persons advanced in spiritual attainments 
often deceive themselves. Involuntarily they seek 
splendor and power ; and nothing, in the sphere to 
which they belong, reveals to them either the one or 
the other. That faithful soul I have described to you, 
cannot perhaps give an account of his thoughts ; he is 
scarcely conscious of his state ; he has the appearance 
of seeking long after that which he has found ; he ap- 
pears behind those whom he really precedes. His faith 
is not always a well-connected system ; it has many de- 
ficiencies, many apparent inconsistencies ; faithful in 
principle, he errs sometimes in form. That very joy 
which seems inseparable from Christianity, does not ap- 
pear very perceptible either in his aspect or in his dis- 
course. That enthusiasm which kindles on the counte- 
nance of some, is foreign to his character, frightens per- 
haps his timid humility. In a word, his life is one " hid 
with God," which God only knows, and which God only 
appreciates. 

But these obscure gifts are the ones which Paul ex- 
alts in my text, and proclaims as the most necessary. 
This is true, in the first place, with reference to the in- 
dividual who possesses them. What is the great point 
at issue for him ? What is his supreme interest ? It 
is the re-establishment in him of the divine image ; it is 
regeneration ; for regeneration is salvation. Well, that 
regeneration consists entirely in the obscure or feeble 
gifts of which we have spoken. The other gifts which 



POWER OF THE FEEBLE. 399 

God may confer upon a soul are, to speak justly, divine 
favors, by which he would make known his munificence ; 
they are the splendors which he scatters here and there, 
as he judges necessary, special privileges, which serve 
to indicate, even on earth, to what glory a regenerated 
soul may attain in heaven. But it is not on this condi- 
tion alone that he is regenerated and saved. Nor is 
there all the difference which might be thought between 
the more splendid and the more obscure gifts. When 
the sun sheds his beneficent rays upon our globe, he 
penetrates at once into palaces and cottages; but in 
palaces his beams are reflected from crystal and gold ; 
in cottages, they fall upon tarnished surfaces which give 
back no reflection ; — no matter, in the cottage as well 
as in the palace, he diffuses heat and life. In the hum- 
ble retreat of the poor, as well as in the mansion of roy- 
alty, what has penetrated is equally the star of day, 
the king of the heavens, and the soul of nature. So, 
also, in the case of the obscure Christian, it is truly the 
Holy Spirit that dwells within him. If that Spirit does 
not reveal himself there with as much splendor, he 
dwells with no less entireness, and with all his essential 
characteristics. That which distinguishes a Christian 
is not precisely enthusiasm and ardor, still less talent 
and eloquence ; but humble faith, the faith which knows 
how to wait, humility, and especially love. With these 
gifts, he has passed from death to life : what needs he 
more ? 

More ? Ah ! God has doubtless shown his wisdom in 
rarely according more. Danger is attached to all ele- 
vation, from which spiritual elevation is not expected. 
Internal gifts are those particularly, which, incorporated 
with our being, appear to form a part of ourselves. 



400 vinet's miscellanies. 

We too easily forget that we possess them by grace, 
and that it is absurd to glorify ourselves on account of 
what we have received. Pride, which ferments secretly 
in the recesses of our soul, takes occasion to gain entire 
possession of it. Hence burning fervors and extraor- 
dinary talents have often been seen opening a passage 
to spiritual pride, which, like all other pride, goes before 
destruction. This danger is so real and so great, that 
our Lord frequently takes occasion to bring some 
internal humiliation upon those whom, without this, 
their privileges would elevate too high. St. Paul, 
without explaining himself further, tells us " of a thorn 
in the flesh,'' which doubtless reminded him of his former 
misery, and preserved him from being elated with pride. 
And to how many distinguished Christians has God 
shown himself on purpose sparing of some grace, the 
possession of which would have made their glory too 
complete, and their position too perilous ? How many 
Christians have found, in the necessity of struggling 
with some obstinate bias, or in the presence of some 
irresistible doubt, a counterpoise to that presumption 
which naturally springs from the consciousness of power ! 
By which we may judge how wise is that precept of 
the great apostle, " Seek not high things, but walk with 
the humble." 

These obscure and feeble gifts are also the most 
necessary to the church. All the graces of God, splen- 
did or obscure, have benefited the church ; but God 
having multiplied feeble Christians, and distributed more 
sparingly those that are strong, has by this sufficiently 
indicated the importance he attaches to the former. If, 
in the primitive church, he granted extraordinary gifts 
to believers generally, it was only in a certain measure, 



POWER OF THE FEEBLE. 401 

and for a time. In general, he has appeared disposed 
to humble power, reserving triumphs for weakness. 
" He has chosen the foolish things of the world to con- 
found the wise, and feeble things to confound the strong, 
things vile and despised, yea, things that are not to 
bring to naught things that are." He has brought into 
competition riches and poverty, wisdom and ignorance, 
philosophy and rusticity : but poverty, rusticity, and 
ignorance have conquered. From time to time he has 
called to his aid genius and power, and permitted them 
to co-operate in his work ; but when he has so willed 
it, the sling of the young son of Jesse has sufficed to 
overthrow Goliath. The smallness of the means has 
only served to enhance the power of him who employed 
them. In all time, the church has been sufficient to the 
church, truth has been sufficient to truth. Eloquence 
and enthusiasm have not done so much for this sacred 
cause as the modest virtues, the uniform activity, and 
the patient prayers of thousands of believers whose 
names are unknown. 

The consideration of the great movements which 
have been accomplished in the bosom of the church, 
have led some persons to a different judgment. A Paul, 
an Augustine, and a Luther were certainly not feeble 
members of the church. Such men, or rather such 
powers, have been ordained of God, in the course of 
time, to prepare the soil of the church for a glorious 
harvest, to open to the Christian life a favorable and 
more extensive sphere. And God forbid that we should 
fail to recognize the importance of these grand manifes- 
tations ! But the reign of God on earth is nothing else 
than his reign in each of the souls which compose the 
church. And if the prosperity of the church has for 



402 vinet's miscellanies. 

its measure the number and reality of individual con- 
versions, if God is more honored in the profound emo- 
tions of souls subdued by grace, than by the public and 
solemn proclamation of the doctrines of revealed reli- 
gion, let us acknowledge as a truth, that the feeble mem- 
bers of the church contribute much more, proportionally, 
to the reign of God, than the powerful members of whom 
w T e have spoken. 

As to the latter, it seems to us that admiration very 
generally excuses us from imitation. Appearing at 
intervals, such men do not come into contact with us 
all. In this respect, their writings and their memory 
but imperfectly replace their life ; for it is by feeble 
things, by ordinary and familiar details, that they could 
make upon us a deep impression. Life alone could 
have acted upon life. But isolated from us by circum- 
stances, by their very greatness, by their fame, they 
can exert upon us only an indirect and general influ- 
ence, doubtless favorable and salutary, but going no 
further than simply disposing us to observe and study 
the feeble members of that flock, of which we must 
form a part in order to be the children of God. These 
latter models appear more within our reach, although 
their gifts may not be in reality either less precious or 
less divine than those of the first class of Christians. 
We feel that nothing can excuse us from their posses- 
sion ; that nothing can supply their place ; that while 
we may be neither wise, nor eloquent, nor rapt by re- 
ligious ecstacy, to the third heavens, we must be holy ; 
that this is the natural vocation of every soul, and the 
design of God respecting us all. This holiness, propor- 
tioned to our measure, and adapted to a sphere of activity 
which does not transcend our own, attracts us by its 



POWER OF THE FEEBLE. 403 

simplicity, while it strikes us by its beauty. Mys- 
terious in its origin, wonderful in its nature, nay, mirac- 
ulous, if we consider the changes it produces, but not 
the less human, attainable, and practicable, it is the 
prose of the kingdom of heaven, which each is bound to 
speak. Yes, these lives, habitually imbued with the 
spirit of Christianity, of a single and even tenor, of a 
strict consistency, of a solemn unity, of a sweet serenity, 
of an indefatigable and tranquil activity, of a zeal which 
does much, and says little, — lives, whose Christian 
character appears as much more incontestable as en- 
thusiasm takes a place inferior to that of charity, are 
what accomplish the most for the cause of Christ. 
These constitute the salutary contagion which is per- 
petually acting in the church, which has kept, through 
the most disastrous times, so many hearts for the Lord, 
and, in more favored epochs, multiplied them abun- 
dantly. 

These observations sufficiently prove that sincere 
and humble piety is the greatest of forces, and that the 
more feeble members of the church are the most neces- 
sary to its establishment and its conquests. It is not more 
difficult to prove that these are the members which are 
the most necessary to civil society. This is to add 
the last feature of their character; for we ought not to 
lose sight of the fact, that the Christian is a citizen, 
and that everything he has received from above, has 
been given him to be used in society. We have distin- 
guished two kinds of striking superiority, the one relating 
to the heart, the other to the intellect. As to the first, 
it has sometimes produced very great effects, but rather 
in the bosom of the church itself, and in our spiritual 
relations, than in the relations of ordinary life. As to the 



404 vinet's miscellanies. 

second, which consists in mental gifts, it is beneficial 
only when it is animated and sanctified by the spirit of 
piety. But what is necessary to society is this very 
piety. The domain of piety is not confined within the 
circle of its meditations, to the inner life, and religious 
worship ; piety is profitable for all things, is applicable 
to all things. But we go further, and say, piety is the 
only principle of the life of states, and the only remedy 
of diseased society. Behold, with all its array of human 
virtues and brilliant talents, what an aspect society pre- 
sents. Raise yourselves a little higher than the limited 
circle of your domestic relations, though you may find 
even in these relations, in one way or another, the proof 
of what I advance ; contemplate that vast horizon of 
society, listen to that frightful tumult of all the passions 
unchained, plunge into the heart, and "into the remotest 
recesses of that gloomy labyrinth ; in a word, for a few 
moments contemplate the world. Of course, you have 
not the scrutinizing glance of Him who searcheth the 
heart and the reins ; you cannot go to the bottom of 
that revolting sink of iniquity, which lies concealed in 

the heart ! My brethren, we cannot see the glory of 

God till we die ; can we then, without dying, contem- 
plate human iniquity ? But you have seen the surface ; 
that is enough. Judge now, if the finest talents are 
capable of establishing harmony in that chaos, peace in 
that tumult. Judge, also, if the presence of a small 
number of men, full of Christian joy and enthusiastic 
fervor, and for that very reason, unintelligible to the 
mass, could exert over it a sensible influence. O the 
true leaven in that mass is the humble, tranquil, ob- 
scure, active virtue of the thousands of the faithful, 
diffused through all the recesses of society, struggling 



POWER OF THE FEEBLE. 405 

by their example and their prayers against the general 
depravity, and causing their light to shine before men 
so sweetly, as, at least, to attract some souls. It is such, 
that the Lord has cast as seed into the world, a grain of 
which will produce, in some twenty, in others thirty, 
and in others a hundred fold. These are the first fruits 
of that great harvest, which is ripening in the field of 
the world, and which, we have the assurance, will one 
day cover with its fruits the entire face of the earth. 

That day is not yet come ; and the circumstances 
which are to bring it develop themselves slowly. 
Everything in the world moves more rapidly than the 
progress of that kingdom of love and peace. What im- 
provements are to be made before man will deign to 
care for the improvement of his soul ! Is it not strange, 
to see him making sure of everything except his salva- 
tion ; restoring everything except his conscience ; spec- 
ulating on everything except eternity ? Admirable 
age, to which nothing is wanting, but the one thing 
needful ! Political society is settling itself on new 
foundations, the rights of man are secured, and therein 
I rejoice ; but in the midst of this development of arts 
and opulence, I seek for the Holy Spirit, that spirit of 
moderation, of disinterestedness, and of purity, — where 
is it ? Science, literature, public instruction extend 
their domain ; culture diffuses itself into all the places, 
and amid all the conditions from which it was banished ; 
intelligence is everywhere honored, and therein I cer- 
tainly rejoice ; but amid these triumphs of human 
thought, I seek for the Holy Spirit, the spirit of humil- 
ity, of piety, and of charity ; — where is it ? Ah, my 
brethren, it is still necessary that this divine Consoler 
should console all, that this power should subdue all, 



406 VINET S MISCELLANIES. 

that this life should animate all. Strive by prayer for 
the advent of that glorious day; contend for Jesus 
Christ, who has contended for you ; supplicate with 
fervor that his kingdom may come ; pray that " at his 
name every knee may bow, and every tongue confess, 
that he is Lord, to the glory of God the Father." Ask 
not for the extraordinary gifts which he shed upon the 
apostles in their day, but pray that the Holy Spirit of 
God may multiply among you the number of those 
feeble members, that is, of those humble and faithful 
Christians, who are the power and hope of the church. 
Let all of us together ask it from the Father of lights ; 
and beseech him to add to the church, even on this day, 
some souls that may be saved. 



THE INTOLERANCE OP THE GOSPEL. 

"He that is not with me is against me."— Matt. xii. 30. 



These words were uttered by Jesus Christ, after the 
performance of one of his most splendid miracles. The 
Pharisees pretending that he had performed it by the 
power of the devil, Jesus Christ showed them that it 
was absurd to suppose that the devil would aid in the 
establishment of a religion altogether opposed to his in- 
terests. Is Satan, said he, divided against himself? 
Then, rejecting such an idea, our Saviour added, that 
if Satan was not his accomplice, as the Pharisees sup- 
posed, it followed that he was his adversary. And why ? 
Because, with reference to Jesus Christ, it is absolutely 
necessary to be one thing or another. Every one who 
is not with him, is, for the same reason, against him. 

Thus Jesus Christ took occasion from a particular 
fact, to proclaim a great truth, one which is doubtless 
found diffused through the whole gospel, and results 
from the general spirit of the Christian system, but 
which had not yet received an expression so precise and 
solemn. It is this declaration of our Lord that will oc- 
cupy our attention to-day. Our design is to develop 
the evidences of its truth ; but it is necessary, first of 
all, to explain its principal terms. 



408 vinet's miscellanies. 

Who is the man that is against Jesus Christ? It 
must be sufficiently obvious to all, that by this expres- 
sion, our Saviour designs every man to whom the gos- 
pel is an object of aversion and hatred, whether he con- 
ceal his sentiments in his heart, or manifest them in his 
words and actions. Who, then, is the man that is not 
with or for Jesus Christ ? We do not need to collect 
the features of such an one, by means of our imagina- 
tion. The world is full of persons who are not for 
Jesus Christ. We recognize them in all those members 
of the Christian church who belong to it only by birth, 
and by certain external usages, but whose whole life 
proves that the church inspires them with no interest. 
They have accepted a religion as one accepts a coun- 
try, not by free choice, but by necessity. Christians by 
birth, they are not such by affection. Having examined 
neither the proofs which establish the truth of Christi- 
anity, nor the objections by which it is assailed, they 
believe on the faith of others. They have some gen- 
eral notions of the doctrines of revelation, and have ad- 
mitted them once for all, without ever thinking of them 
again. In a word, religion is to them a matter of high 
propriety, an interesting fact, a social necessity, but 
nothing more. It is neither the rule of their life, nor 
one of their interests. They aid neither by their 
prayers, nor their efforts, in the advancement of the 
kingdom of God. They do not inform themselves 
whether it advances or recedes. Everything has more 
importance to them than the success of that great cause. 
Such are the principal features of the characters of the 
indifferent. 

Now what says the Saviour with reference to these 
men ? " They that are not for me are against me." 



THE INTOLERANCE OF THE GOSPEL. 409 

We do not know a better way of establishing the truth 
of this, than by showing the falseness of the contrary 
proposition, namely, " One may not be for Jesus, and 
yet not be against him ; he may be neither his friend 
nor his enemy ; he may observe, with respect to him, a 
species of neutrality." Let us see if such neutrality is 
possible. 

I observe, in the first place, that a real neutrality is 
one of the rarest things in the world. Man is not made 
for indifference ; undoubtedly he may feel neither love 
nor hatred for things which are completely foreign to 
him, and to which no circumstance directs his atten- 
tion. But whatever affects him nearly, everything 
which exerts an influence upon his fortune, nay more, 
everything which he sees exciting general interest, be- 
comes to him an object of some kind of sentiment. His 
tastes may change, but like a pendulum, he oscillates 
perpetually from affection to aversion, and from aver- 
sion to affection, without ever stopping in the interme- 
diate space. His soul being made for feeling, and feel- 
ing being his life, he is, so to speak, constrained to love 
or hate, and to flee from indifference as a kind of death. 
Each of us, by reflecting upon himself and consulting 
his recollections, will recognize this disposition without 
difficulty. This fact, then, will be sufficient to put us 
on our guard against the notion, that we may not be for 
Jesus Christ, and yet not be against him. 

But if the observation we have just made be true in 
general, it is especially so in the domain of religion. A 
religion is an opinion and a system ; but what distin- 
guishes it from all opinions and systems is, that it pro- 
fesses to be the work of God, and " all in all" to man. 
Any religion which should lay claim to less would belie 

18 



410 vinet's miscellanies. 

itself, and be unworthy of the name of religion. If a 
religion is true, it follows that we ought to love it with 
all our heart ; if false, to detest it with all our heart ; 
for the question turns upon a matter of the highest ex- 
cellence, or a criminal imposture ; a work of God, or a 
work of the devil ; a thing adapted to destroy, or to 
save our souls. Is neutrality, in such a case, possible ? 
Can we remain, without any sentiment, in the presence 
of a fact, overpowering, absorbing, which unceasingly 
solicits a decision ? Is it not here that indifference 
must find its limit ? 

But I go further, and say, if we had even remained 
indifferent, we would not the less have made, without 
willing it, a choice. Because true religion, meriting 
nothing less than our whole love, not to devote our- 
selves to it is to be against it ; and a false religion, not 
deserving anything but our deepest hatred, not to op- 
pose it is to be for it. Here, any middle course is im- 
possible. The indifferent person will hear false religion 
on the one side say to him, Since you are not against 
me, you are for me ; and on the other side, true religion 
cry to him, Since you are not for me, you are against me. 

And to make this last truth more evident, suppose 
that God manifest in the flesh has descended to the 
earth, in the person of a being resembling you ; that the 
character of that being is the ideal of perfection ; his 
work, the salvation of the. human race ; his precepts, 
holiness itself ; his feelings in reference to you, a bound- 
less compassion. You acknowledge in him all these 
attributes, and you say to him, Since thou art the ideal 
of perfection, the rule of holiness, God himself manifest 
in the flesh ; since thou hast shed thy blood upon the 
cross for the salvation of my soul, I cannot be against 



THE INTOLERANCE OF THE GOSPEL. 411 

thee, but I will not be for thee. And for whom, then, 
great God, for whom, then, is that heart ! for it is neces- 
sary to be for some one ; the heart must attach itself to 
something ; it does not live but as it loves. For whom, 
then, will you be, if not for God ? Probably for your- 
selves, I suppose. But what is that you, separated from 
God, except the flesh in all its corruption, and sin in all 
its deformity ? And if a man is for such things, is he 
not against God ? If he is for his own depraved will, 
is he not against God ? If he is for a demon, is he not 
against God ? No, my brethren, there are in the world 
only two empires, which I need not name ; but I affirm 
that he who is not in the one, is necessarily in the other ; 
that he who is not with Jesus Christ, is against Jesus 
Christ. Behold the neutrality of the indifferent ! 

The better to appreciate this neutrality, let us enter 
the heart of the indifferent, and give account of the 
feelings which reign there. He says he has no hatred. 
Let us pass it over. This hatred we shall soon meet 
again. But are there in his heart love and obedience ; 
love especially for Jesus Christ ? Assuredly not, seeing 
he is not for Jesus Christ. Well, to refuse love to Jesus 
Christ, I affirm, is to do him all the evil which an open 
enemy could, or, at least, would do. If Jesus Christ 
had come into the world, as a king into a revolted prov- 
ince, in order to extinguish rebellion, and cause the 
silence of terror to reign in it, he might be satisfied with 
a trembling submission, and care nothing for the evil we 
do him. But such a submission he did not desire, nor 
can desire. That alone which he desired, that alone for 
which he descended to the earth, the end to which he 
directed all his toils, was the conquest of our heart. 
Separate from that triumph, every other is nothing to 



412 vinet's miscellanies. 

him. If, then, instead of our hearts which he demands, 
we contemptuously offer him a passive submission 
w T hich he does not ask ; if, in the place of that devout 
gratitude which he has merited by his blood, we propose, 
as a matter of favor, to spare him our insults, would not 
this of itself be the crudest of insults, the only one, 
indeed, to which he could be sensible ? For what is 
our hatred in his eyes but the more clear and frank ex- 
pression of the divorce which exists between him and 
us ; a somewhat more distinct form given to the out- 
rage which our ingratitude constantly presents before 
his eyes ? But perhaps you consider it a more serious 
thing to attack and oppose him. Indeed, you are mis- 
taken ! For what could your miserable attacks add to 
the crime of your ingratitude ? Ah ! since you have 
the misfortune not to love him, attack, combat, make 
war upon him, as you please. The Almighty will do 
well to be moved by the rebellion of an insect ! Agi- 
tate yourselves, then ; struggle in your dust ; raise an 
entire world, if you can, against the King of worlds ; 
you will not retard for a single instant, nor drive back 
a hair's breadth the progress of the eternal counsels ; not 
that Jehovah will notice your ridiculous efforts because 
he sees all things ; but because he has seen, before all* 
that you do not love him, a fact which ranks you with 
his enemies. 

We have spoken of love, and what shall we say of 
obedience ? Is there obedience in the indifferent ? No, 
doubtless ; for he who loves not, obeys not. It is true 
that a servile fear may fulfil some external duties, and 
produce a formal obedience ; but the gospel requires a 
spiritual obedience, which is not possible without love. 
To subdue his passions, to use the world as not abus- 



THE INTOLERANCE OF THE GOSPEL. 413 

ing it, to live in all humility and charity, to consecrate 
all his powers to the advancement of the kingdom of 
God, is what the indifferent will not do, what he cannot 
do ; he lives, then, in disobedience. But I ask you, 
how would that man be regarded in a state, who would 
not obey its laws ? Certainly as an enemy ; even if he 
had never taken up arms against it. Is not a rebellious 
subject an enemy ? How, then, shall he be considered, 
who cares no more for the spiritual laws of Jesus 
Christ, than if Jesus Christ had never given them ? 
Certainly as an enemy. Whence it follows that he who 
is not for Jesus Christ is, for the same reason, against 
him. 

But, we will not content ourselves with having shown 
that in principle the indifferent is a real enemy of Jesus 
Christ. We will show you further that, when circum- 
stances will it, he becomes an enemy positively, and in 
fact. What, in reality, is this indifference, but a secret 
aversion to Christ and his doctrine, as we have already 
seen, a discord between the soul and Jesus, a slumber- 
ing enmity ? As long as it is not excited by circum- 
stances, it remains asleep, it has no consciousness of 
itself, it does not feel that it hates ; and in some persons, 
it remains in this form, the most dangerous perhaps, all 
their life long. But in many others, unforeseen circum- 
stances awaken it, and cause it to appear in its real 
character. Sometimes it is a clearer view of the truth 
by which it is awakened. That truth from which they 
turned away their eyes, by-and-by strikes them with 
unexpected vividness ; they see at once that the gospel 
is a serious reality, and that they are about to accept or 
reject it. They call up the whole period during which 
they have sinned without reflection ; they feel, above 



414 vinet's miscellanies. 

all, that they have a heart which cannot relish the strict 
maxims and spiritual savor of the gospel, and perceive 
the moment they treat it seriously, they must change 
their whole life. Then its renunciations, privations, 
sacrifices, present themselves in a crowd ; indignation 
penetrates their soul ; but instead of directing it against 
themselves, whose conduct condemns the law, they di- 
rect it against the law which condemns their conduct. 
Thenceforward they can never speak of neutrality or 
indifference ; the veil is torn awav, the wound is made, 
the hatred is aroused. Ever after they are directly 
against Jesus Christ. 

Sometimes, also, the transition of enmity to its true 
form has been occasioned by the religious revival of 
those around them. Persons have found themselves in 
the situations we have just described ; the truth has 
pierced them with an unexpected wound ; but after a 
moment of indecision, their indignation, which knew 
not what to fasten upon, has turned against themselves. 
In the necessity of hating either themselves, or the gos- 
pel, they have preferred to hate themselves. And from 
hatred of themselves, they have naturally passed to the 
love of Jesus Christ. Then regenerated by the Spirit 
from on high, they have lived a new life ; and notwith- 
standing their humility and reserve, there is so much 
difference even externally, in living for the world, and 
living for God, that the change has struck their neigh- 
bors. Their life has become a living gospel. The 
indifferent and neutral have then read the gospel, not in 
dead characters upon inanimate leaves, but in living 
letters in the hearts of men. This has formed, if I may 
so express myself, a new edition of the word of God, 
with the commentary of the Holy Spirit. Then the 



THE INTOLERANCE OF THE GOSPEL. 415 

same struggle has been produced in the hearts of the 
indifferent we have already described, the evidence of 
the gospel, the divinity of Christ, and the infinite solem- 
nity of life, have burst upon their vision, and over- 
whelmed their soul. Then have they found it no longer 
possible to shut themselves up in a system of cold neu- 
trality. The soul, too strongly pressed, has been com- 
pelled to take a part, — alas ! it has taken its part, and 
that is to hate ! But in spite of appearances, its posi- 
tion is not essentially changed ; it has the same aversion 
to the gospel, only with a more vivid consciousness, and 
a deeper feeling ; and we can only say that in this is 
verified the prediction of the aged Simeon, who, when 
holding the infant Jesus in his arms, exclaimed, " By 
thee shall the thoughts of many hearts be revealed." 

To hate Jesus Christ, such is the result in which neu- 
trality and indifference eventually terminate. To hate 
Jesus Christ ! what words are we compelled to utter ! 
The most confirmed sceptic would not have himself 
considered as one who hates Jesus Christ. But this 
sentiment which horrifies the sceptic, is, ye indifferent 
ones, the habitual sentiment of your soul ! 

But that you may know at least what you do by 
hating Jesus Christ, come and see. That teacher, full 
of grace and truth, who went everywhere sowing the 
word of reconciliation ; that compassionate physician^ 
whom no wretch approached without being consoled ; 
that friend, who sought to gather you to himself before 
impending calamity, as a hen gathereth her brood under 
her wings, is the being whom you hate ; that model of 
purity and charity, that man in whom his most furious 
enemie's could not discover the shadow of a stain, is he 
whom you hate ; that celestial hero, who, bearing on 



416 vinet's miscellanies. 

his conscience the guilt of humanity, sunk, in the gar- 
den of Gethsemane, under the burden of the sins of the 
whole earth, and drained for you the cup of divine 
wrath, as he lay prostrate in the dust, bathed in sweat 
and blood, is he whom you hate ; that victim, who for 
you painfully climbed up the height of Calvary, permit- 
ted himself to be fastened to the cross, and suffered, in 
his person, all that imagination can conceive of agonies, 
and whose last groan was a prayer for his executioners, 
is he whom you hate ! Do not reject this statement. 
If you are nothing for him who has been everything for 
you ; if you do not give one pulsation of your heart for 
him who has given up his life for you ; if your life is a 
perpetual resistance of his laws, you are his enemies ; 
if you love him not, you hate him ; and if you do not 
yet fight against him, you will fight against him soon. 

I have arrived at the close of a painful demonstration, 
which I did not undertake, I ought to confess, without 
repugnance. But knowing too well the condition I 
have described, fully persuaded for a long time that he 
that is not with Christ is against him, I have felt it my 
duty to point out to my brethren the dangers of a neu- 
trality in regard to which many perhaps deceive them- 
selves. I would, therefore, say to them after the exam- 
ple of Joshua, "Choose ye this day whom ye will serve." 
Those have chosen, who, with slow and laborious step, 
but without irresolution, have commenced their march 
towards the land of infinite discoveries ; who not } r et 
possessing the whole truth, seek it with sincerity and 
patience ; who, solicited by the flesh and the world, 
turn with a sigh to God, who can aid them, and who, 
every day, offer to the Saviour their good- will, nof being 
able to offer him anything else. May God preserve us 



THE INTOLERANCE OF THE GOSPEL. 417 

from discouraging any one, and " crushing," as the poet 
says, " the new-born germ, from which may spring an 
angel !" But there are others who have not chosen, 
and care not to choose. Some of them persuade them- 
selves that, provided they are neither for nor against 
Jesus Christ, he, in like manner, will neither be for nor 
against them. It was necessary to show such that the 
neutrality in which they conceal themselves is a real 
enmity, and that it will be judged as such. It was 
necessary to arouse such by our warnings, and, in our 
feebleness we have made the attempt. Bless, Lord, 
these warnings, given in thy name. Cause them to 
penetrate, and take possession of all the souls which 
need to hear them ; nay, of all our souls ; for who does 
not need to be warned ? Inspire us all with the sincere 
desire to belong to Jesus Christ entirely and forever. 
18* 



THE TOLERANCE OF THE GOSPEL. 

"He that is not against us is for us."— Luke ix. 20. 



Some days ago, we developed the meaning of these 
words of our Lord, " He that is not with me is against 
me." That was presenting to you the gospel in all its 
intolerance. For the gospel has its intolerance, although 
it sympathizes not with persecutors, and breathes entire 
religious freedom. Its intolerance consists in consider- 
ing every one as an enemy who is not its friend. We 
endeavored to convince you that this intolerance is 
reasonable, conformed to the nature of things, and wor- 
thy of God. To-day we attempt to explain these words, 
which are also those of our Saviour, " He that is not 
against us is for us." At first sight, nothing seems 
more contradictory than these two propositions. But 
the contradiction is only apparent ; these two state- 
ments, instead of neutralizing, complete each other; 
they give a natural explanation of each other's mean- 
ing, and, to speak exactly, are only two aspects of the 
same truth. If our preceding text has shown us the 
intolerance of the gospel, this shows us the limit of that 
intolerance. If the first has informed us of what the 
gospel will not endure, the second teaches us what it 
will endure. If the one establishes the intolerance of 



THE TOLERANCE OF THE GOSPEL. 419 

God, the other attacks and reproves the intolerance of 
men. These two expressions, these two truths, support 
each other, and hold such a relation the one to the 
other, that, in discussing the first a few days ago, we 
pledged ourselves, as it w T ere, to discuss the other to-day. 
This we proceed to do, without however concealing, 
that if our first subject was difficult, this is still more so. 
You will all feel this, more or less, and for the same 
reason, understand how necessary it is in such a matter, 
that the Holy Spirit, which has purified our intentions, 
should enlighten our understanding, and direct our 
words. Ask this from him on our behalf, and ask also 
for yourselves an attentive spirit, a docile heart, and 
that quick intelligence of divine things which cannot be 
given but by the Spirit of God. 

While Jesus, accompanied by some disciples he had 
chosen, is exercising, in Judea, his ministry of compas- 
sion, a man casts out demons in his name. His disci- 
ples wish to prevent him from doing so, because he fol- 
lows not Jesus with them. But the Lord rebukes this 
indiscreet zeal, by saying, " Forbid him not ; for he that 
is not against us is for us." 

He that is not against us is for us. In the sense of 
the text we explained the other day, these words would 
be false ; for we have seen that if any one is not posi- 
tively the friend of Jesus, he is his enemy. But let us 
carefully notice what is referred to in the words we ex- 
plain to-day. It is a man that cast out demons in the 
name of Jesus, only he does not follow Jesus with his 
disciples. 

But such a man, though he did not form a part of the 
company that followed Jesus Christ, was certainly not 
against him ; he was for Jesus Christ as much as the 



420 VINET S MISCELLANIES. 

disciples themselves, and perhaps even more so. But 
what, in fact, was necessary in order to be for Jesus 
Christ ? To confess his name, and to do his work ; and 
these two conditions were united in the man under con- 
sideration. 

He confessed the name of Jesus Christ ; for the gos- 
pel informs us that it was in the name of Jesus that he 
cast out demons. Thus Jesus was to him what he is to 
all Christians, " He that was sent to destroy the king- 
dom of Satan," — he before whom all the powers of 
darkness and the empire of evil must bend and fall, — 
whose name alone, invoked through faith, is an impen- 
etrable buckler against all the fiery darts of hell, — in a 
word, the Saviour, because he saves us from our most 
cruel, from our only real enemy. 

Not only did this man confess the adorable name of 
Jesus, but he performed his work, he cast out demons. 
He fought under the banner, and for the cause of Jesus. 
He advanced, according to his ability, the triumph of 
his Master. He made the enemies of Jesus his en- 
emies, and the great design of Jesus his interest. What 
more did those disciples who accompanied Jesus in all 
his wanderings ? The following we read in the chapter 
from which our text is taken, " And behold, a man of 
the company cried out, saying, Master, I beseech thee, 
look upon my son ; for he is mine only child. And lo, 
a spirit seizes him, and causes him to cry out ; and it 
teareth him so that he foameth again, and bruising him, 
hardly departeth from him. And I besought thy disci- 
ples to cast him out ; and they could not. And Jesus 
answering, said, O faithless and perverse generation ! 
how long shall I be with you and suffer you ?" 
(v. 39-41.) To whom, in your opinion, did he address 



THE TOLERANCE OF THE GOSPEL. 421 

these overwhelming words, " Unbelieving and perverse 
generation," but to the disciples ? With whom, if not 
with the disciples, was Jesus tired of associating ? And 
these very disciples, destitute of the faith necessary to 
perform the work of their Master, are the ones opposed 
to the labors of that unknown man ! And why ?• Be- 
cause he followed not Jesus with them. 

Such, in fact, is all the difference which appears be- 
tween this man and the disciples. It must be confessed 
that, at first sight, it is striking. How can he be for 
Jesus Christ and not follow him ? But without seeking, 
by means of gratuitous suppositions, for the reasons 
which kept this man by himself, and compelled him to 
serve Jesus at a distance from him, let us observe, that 
at this period, our Saviour was accompanied only by 
those whom he had expressly called, by authoritatively 
separating them from their labors and their families, in 
order to prepare them for a glorious apostolate. It was 
thus he commanded Peter to leave his nets, and Matthew 
his bank, and follow him ; but such an appeal doubtless 
had not been addressed to this man. It was only a little 
later (chap, x) that seventy disciples were associated 
with the twelve apostles ; and who knows that this 
adorer of the name of Jesus did not take the first place 
among them ? 

But all this is not of so much importance as the re- 
flection we are about to present. What is it to follow 
Jesus Christ ? According to the apostles, yet imper- 
fectly enlightened, it is to accompany the person of the 
Saviour in all places, and it was thus they followed him. 
But such a view is gross and carnal, and we appeal, 
upon this point, to the apostles themselves. One of 
them, the organ, in this matter, of the sentiment of all, 



422 vinet's miscellanies. 

has clearly expressed it, in saying, " If we have formerly 
known Christ according to the flesh, we know him in 
this manner no more." (2 Cor. v. 16.) And well has 
the apostle said so ; for to know Jesus Christ is not to 
have seen him in the flesh ; to follow Jesus Christ is not 
to follow his person. To know and to follow him is to 
recognize him as God manifest in the flesh, to rest upon 
his promises, to breathe his spirit. In this sense we can 
follow him, though separated by a thousand leagues and 
a thousand years. 

Let us see, according to this view, how the apostles 
followed him, at the period referred to in my text. The 
imagination is pleased to represent that retinue of friends 
accompanying Jesus everywhere ; but it sees them such 
as they since became, not such as they were then. Did 
these men, whom Jesus had chosen, not for what they 
were in themselves, but, as one may say, for what they 
were not, in order more fully to illustrate in them his 
power, really follow Jesus Christ ? Did they follow 
him, when they disputed among themselves who should 
occupy the first places in heaven ? (Mark ix. 33, 34.) 
Did they follow him, when they besought him to bring 
down fire from heaven, to destroy an unbelieving city ? 
(Luke ix. 54.) Did they follow him, when, doubting 
whether they had done wisely in attaching themselves 
to him, they asked from him indemnities and pledges for 
a sacrifice scarcely commenced ? (Mark x. 28.) Ah ! 
how many times, in the midst of that company of apos- 
tles, was the Son of God alone ? The sole confidant 
of his own high designs, the sole auditor of his own di- 
vine thoughts, how often did he seek around him in 
vain for a single soul that comprehended him, a single 
heart that loved him as he wished to be loved ! In this 



THE TOLERANCE OF THE GOSPEL. 423 

point of view his solitude was profound. It was one of 
the most painful trials of his life, as it was to be the bit- 
terest pang of his death. What, then, did these disci- 
ples claim when they said, " This man followeth thee not 
with us ?" What difference did that establish in their 
favor ; and how could they know that this unknown 
person did not follow Jesus better than they did them- 
selves ? 

O, how does intolerance here, as in all other cases, 
show itself the close companion of weakness, and toler- 
ance the associate of greatness ! Jesus is the most tol- 
erant of beings, because he is the most holy. Every- 
thing which affects his person as a man, disturbs him 
not, wounds him not. What is it to him that this man 
does not follow him with the twelve ? He casts out 
demons, and casts them out in the name of the Son of 
God. It is enough ; this man is for him. 

On the contrary, see these apostles, still so weak in 
faith. Their disposition is the reverse of that of Jesus. 
What wounds them is not what wounds the cause of 
God, but what offends the person of their Master as a 
man, say rather, what offends their own person ! What, 
in fact, is their complaint ? " He followeth thee not 
with us ;" he is not one of us. True he confesses the 
name of Jesus ; true he casts out demons ; but he fol- 
lows not Jesus with us ; it is enough ; he is against 
Jesus. You have seen the tolerance of God ; behold 
the intolerance of man. 

The question now presents itself, whether this decla- 
ration of Jesus is applicable only to the occasion on 
which it was uttered ; or whether it may not be appli- 
cable to our times and our circumstances. Are there, 
in our day, persons who wish to forbid others to cast 



424 vinet's miscellanies. 

out demons in the name of Jesus, because they follow 
him not with them ? My brethren, while admitting 
some differences produced by difference of times, and 
giving to some expressions a more general sense, we 
meet, in our day, the same kind of intolerance as that 
which merited the rebuke of our Saviour, and we find 
for his words an immediate and constant application. 

To prevent a man casting out demons in the name 
of Jesus, is what we cannot always do; but to reject, to 
exclude, to condemn him, we certainly can. To cast 
out demons, as the man in the text did, is what cannot 
take place, in modern times ; but to oppose the power 
of the devil, by repelling his pernicious inspirations, by 
avoiding the snares he lays for our souls, by extirpating 
from our own hearts, and those of others, the germs of 
vice and error he has deposited there, is as possible in 
our day as in the times of the apostles ; and, thanks to 
God, is what we frequently witness. Finally, to con- 
demn, reject, and exclude a man, who, though he fol- 
lows not Jesus with us, does, nevertheless, perform the 
works we have just indicated, is still seen, and seen 
every day ; and this, therefore, furnishes a perpet- 
ual application for these most benignant words of the 
Saviour, " Why do ye forbid him ? He that is not 
against us is for us." 

Jesus has disappeared from the earth, we cannot, 
therefore, follow his person ; but in the spiritual sense 
we have explained, some are easily induced to believe 
that they follow him better than others. Such a church, 
or such a community believes that to follow Jesus 
Christ, it is necessary to be with it, form a part of its 
organization, join the society of which it is composed, 
espouse its interests, hang out its banner. This church, 



THE TOLERANCE OF THE GOSPEL. 425 

this community, then, still appears, as in the times of 
Isaiah, to utter these words, so full of presumption and 
bigotry, " Stand back, come not near me ; for I am ho- 
lier than thou." (Isa. lxv. 5.) And more than this, we 
see that proposition put in practice, which shocks us 
so much in the doctrines of a communion from which 
we have separated : " Out of our church no salvation !" 

Yet, it is certain, in the first place, that no church 
can flatter itself that it is exempt from faults and imper- 
fections. No church can offer itself as a perfect model 
to all others ; consequently, no church can pretend that 
out of its pale it is is impossible to belong to Jesus. It 
is absolutely necessary, then, in order to judge of those, 
who are not of its body, to have recourse to some other 
test, than the gross one of opening its registers, and see- 
ing if such a name is found there. 

Even if it were perfect, and permitted to think so, it 
would not, on that account, be justified in condemning 
those who do not belong to it. And for this simple 
reason, that perfection in doctrine and in morality can- 
not be the heritage of all ; that some particular errors, 
some imperfections of detail, do not hinder a man from 
being essentially in a good state ; that in every case 
there is a progressive improvement, with which none 
can well dispense ; that, in general, no one arrives by 
a single effort, at what is best in theory and practice ; 
and that all that man can reasonably require from his 
fellow-man is, that he should follow the road which 
conducts thither. 

What I have just said, is not intended either to re- 
joice the careless, or alarm the strict. For, in the first 
place it is certain that the gospel requires nothing less 
from all its disciples than perfection, both in faith and 



426 VINET S MISCELLANIES. 

in morals ; and secondly, it has so clearly traced the 
limits, beyond which there is nothing but error and con- 
demnation, that is impossible on this subject, to make 
the slightest mistake. What is the man who follows 
not the Saviour with his apostles, but nevertheless, is 
for Jesus, according to the declaration of Jesus him- 
self? He is one who casts out demons in the name of 
Jesus. I say, then, to every intolerant community, You 
condemn that man because he follows not Jesus with 
you; but is it necessary to be with you, in order to con- 
fess the name of Jesus ? This, however, is evidently 
done by the man whom you condemn. I admit that he 
has not studied so profoundly the system of religion as 
you have ; that he does not with such exactness unite 
its different parts ; that he does not so thoroughly un- 
derstand the Scriptures ; that the gifts of the Holy 
Spirit have been conferred upon him in scanty measure, 
and apparently according to his necessities ; but he 
confesses the name of Jesus. The consciousness of his 
misery has led him to Christ ; he has cast himself into 
the arms of the Saviour ; he has loved him with all the 
love of which his heart is capable. It is in Him that 
he seeks an asylum against the wrath to come, a conso- 
lation in his sorrows, a resource in his wants. It is 
through Him that he invokes his Heavenly Father ; and 
it is the name of Jesus, which he loves to whisper in the 
silence of his closet, and delights to honor before men, 
as the only name by which he can be saved. What 
wants he more ? What ! join himself to you ? Confess 
your name as equal to that of the divine Saviour ? 
Hang out your banner by the side of that of the Lamb ? 
But who has told you that, I pray you ? Whence do 
you derive it, but from yourselves ? I think all that 



THE TOLERANCE OF THE GOSPEL. 427 

you can claim from him (my text teaches so,) is that he 
be not against you, that he do not reject and condemn 
you. Nay more, even if he had declared against you 
by prepossession and error, he had done nothing more 
than you have done to him. If he ought not to do so, 
why do you yourselves do it ? And if you can do it, 
why might not he ? The wrong is reciprocal ; and 
both he and you have to return within the bounds of 
equity. 

I acknowledge, however, that it is not everything, 
simply to confess and invoke the name of Jesus. "Not 
every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter 
the kingdom of heaven." He must, in addition to this, 
cast out demons in the name of the Lord, that is, he 
must sanctify himself. And this is precisely what that 
man has done, whom you condemn. I can easily be- 
lieve that he is behind you, but he advances ; I can 
easily believe that you are far before him, but he follows 
you ; I can believe that you have found means of edifi- 
cation of which he is ignorant, and admit, that if he 
were more enlightened, he would profit by the resources 
you have found, and that he would join you. Never- 
theless, he has understood, and his conduct proves it, 
that whosoever says he belongs to Christ ought to live 
even as Christ lived ; that the crucifixion of the old 
man with his lusts is the only homage worthy of being 
offered to the Saviour ; that he must cast out, in his 
name, the demons of pride, of sensuality, of self-love, and 
of self-righteousness which infest the heart of man ; that 
he must contend against them by vigilance and prayer ; 
and that unless he is made a new creature in Christ 
Jesus, he cannot see the kingdom of heaven. I say to 
you, God alone may require more ; yet I believe he 



428 VINET S MISCELLANIES. 

casts a look of benignity and peace upon that servant, 
who has been faithful, in few things it is true, but yet 
faithful. Is it for you, then, to condemn him ? 

How often have I seen, bearing the burden of the day, 
and bending under the cross of his Saviour, a man to 
w r hom intolerance has scarcely accorded the name of 
Christian. Contending with old weaknesses, so hard to 
remove, bowed down under the habits of a long life, 
and still retaining the visible imprint of his fetters, in- 
veterate habits and usages still revealed in him the old 
man. Yet he had heard the call of grace, and, accord- 
ing to the measure of strength given him, he had made 
his way out of that valley of the shadow of death, by a 
painful path, bathed in sweat and tears. He confessed 
Jesus with sincerity ; but with the feeling of w T retched- 
ness scarcely removed. It was only with timidity, that 
he could deem himself one of the sheep whom Jesus 
knows, whom Jesus loves, and whom his crook conducts 
to the pastures of life. And I have seen men, on ac- 
count of the incoherence of his language, the remains 
of his ancient habits, and the feebleness of his charac- 
ter, take it upon them to refuse him the title they ac- 
corded to themselves, and dispute his interest in their 
common hopes ! Yet these men called themselves 
Christians ! And they were such in fact ; but the re- 
mains of the old man persuaded them, that in order to 
follow Jesus Christ, he must follow him with them, seek 
their society, relish their discourse, adopt their prac* 
tices. But I have consoled myself by remembering that 
they were at one time more exclusive still, that Christi- 
anity had already partially subdued their native intoler- 
ance ; and by reflecting, that in proportion as they 
should more fully taste the gift of God, they would put 



THE TOLERANCE OF THE GOSPEL. 429 

on more and more that divine compassion, charity and 
meekness, which ought ever to distinguish the elect of 
God, his saints and well-beloved ones ; for tolerance, I 
have said already, is always in proportion to holiness. 

Ah ! if in our day, we had to complain only of the 
intolerance of Christians, we should be tranquil. Faith, 
which is the occasion of it, is also its remedy. But 
there is a more formidable intolerance, that of unbe- 
lief, or a dead faith. We have seen, with profound re- 
gret, Christian communities condemn men, though they 
cast out demons in the name of Jesus ; but we may 
also see unbelievers and formalists condemning others, 
precisely because they cast out demons in the name of 
Jesus. Tolerant of indifference and lukewarmness, it 
is for zeal and living faith that they reserve their intol- 
erance. And, what is remarkable, it is not because they 
believe themselves to possess the depository of truth, 
and the standard of morals, but on the contrary, be- 
cause they feel that they have them not, and cannot 
suffer any one to enjoy a blessing, of which they are 
destitute. And not only do they condemn them by 
their words, but they hinder them, when they can, they 
interdict, they persecute them. They deny and tram- 
ple under foot, not merely the letter and spirit of the 
gospel, but the most sacred rights of the human race. 
And the immense progress of light is not sufficient to 
repress these excesses, and public reason is scarcely 
shocked at them. 

My dearly beloved brethren, pray with me for the 
peace of Jerusalem ; pray that the powers of darkness 
may not long oppose the reign of light ; pray that the 
consciences of men may receive no other impulse than 
that of the Holy Spirit. Above all, pray that Christian- 



430 vinet's miscellanies. 

ity, becoming purer in all the souls that have received it, 
may present, in every place, the example of that divine 
tolerance which shone in the person of its adorable 
founder ; pray that all Christians may become more and 
more worthy of that divine banner, under which they 
have ranged themselves, the device of which is Love ! 
And thou eternal God, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, 
thou who art clothed with all perfection, and whose 
eyes are too pure to behold iniquity, but who art full of 
patience and long-suffering, breathe thy indulgent spirit 
into those, who themselves need it so much from thee ; 
teach them tolerance to those whom thou dost tolerate ; 
give to them the dispositions of Jesus Christ, who, sat- 
isfied with a pure intention, and an honest will, waits 
long for what he might demand at once. Teach us, like 
him, to look upon the heart, upon what is essential, and 
not upon vain circumstances. Enlarge our heart ; tear 
away the prejudices and pride which have narrowed its 
entrance, and grant that all those w T hom thou hast given 
us as brethren, may find there an asylum and a home ! 



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